Spot on.

Excellent suggestions.

Though I think you’re being coy in not saying you had predicted that James Purnell’s lovingly designed scheme would blow up in his face for the aforementioned reasons.

Between them, these measures would create masses of new, meaningful and needed jobs, for a range of different skills and aptitudes. It’s not cheap, but there aren’t exactly any easy options here

These are not jobs though. The state cannot make jobs it can only remove resources from people and companies who can. This is madness

These are not jobs though. The state cannot make jobs it can only remove resources from people and companies who can.

Provided you deliberately exclude the likes of Renault, Petrobras, EMBRAER, Singapore Airlines, Alcatel, Usinor, Rhone-Poulenc, Elf-Aquitaine and POSCO. Ignore the development history of Japan, Taiwan and Korea as well as that of Prussia then yes, that statement is completely right.

“Provided you deliberately exclude the likes of Renault, Petrobras, EMBRAER, Singapore Airlines, Alcatel, Usinor, Rhone-Poulenc, Elf-Aquitaine and POSCO. Ignore the development history of Japan, Taiwan and Korea as well as that of Prussia then yes, that statement is completely right.”

And also if you think that, say, employing teachers “removes resources from people and companies who can create jobs”.

Yes, that as well 🙂

think anything that strengthens communities is in.

but has Will Hutton or anyone else for that matter stated where the money for this is going to come from. yes money has to be printed, but who will be buying the government debt. and what will happen to the pound and does that matter? is it all not inter-related?

“The state cannot make jobs”

Sounds like a challenge to me!

7 – where’s the money to come from is a good question. The ideas are all very much outline and would need to be costed and developed (I hope the government has people doing this, rather than just trying to fix policies like Flexible New Deal). As ever, it is probably a mix of borrowing money, raising taxes and cutting spending on other, lower priorities.

One aim with directly creating new infrastructure, green, community and caring jobs is that in the medium term it would boost the economy and increase productivity.

goverment debt is going up up up.
.
and the pound has been going down down down.
.
is either or both of these sustainable?

.
.
.
think this subject is as xcritical as the creation of jobs.
money is not going to come out of this air. or is it! haha.

The pound going down isn’t a big enough problem yet… a bit of currency deflation will help our exports and ensure that deflation generally doesn’t occur in the economy.

Govt debt, if it expands to too much, is a potential problem, but as the economy stands right now its not the overriding concerns. Despite what illiterates like newmania pretend, we’re still on firm territory on that. The Japanese for example are much further up to their eyeballs in debt and their economy hasn’t collapsed.

Osborne today admitted money might have to be printed, which is pretty amusing given he was throwing jibes at the govt over this only a few days ago.

These are not jobs though. The state cannot make jobs it can only remove resources from people and companies who can. This is madness

— Newmania

If it looks like a job, talks like a job, walks jauntily like a job, then it’s a fucking job. Don’t matter who created it. Now, I don’t know about you, but I would think that if (a) the country is heading into a recession; and (b) it looks like it could be a long recession; then surely it’s better for all concerned that as many fucking people as fucking possible are in fucking employment and therefore able to fucking contribute both to the fucking economy and to the fucking tax take that’s needed to prop up your fucking heroes in the fucking financial sector – you know, the fucking fuckers that fucking caused this fucking clusterfuck in the fucking first place – in an effort to stop things becoming totally fucked.

That’s my way. No doubt your way would be for every out-of-work person or benefit beneficiary to blow their own brains out, as that may theoretically see your own gross income increase slightly. Because that’s it: you see a set of proposals which probably will never be enacted and immediately think “but what about my fucking taxes?” Fucknuts.

To the OP – I agree with those proposals – but you should also add to that a lower income tax break for the working/lower middle-class, in fact, take a larger chunk of them out of paying income tax altogether – for they are the ones who will spend their new earned income.

Cheesy – you hit the nail on the head. One thing the ‘merchants’ just don’t get is it is they who got the whole country, nay world, in this shit – just carrying on with the same policy will totally destroy everything with the constant spiral downward.

Now is a perfect time to invest – that is for both companies and individuals. Prices are going to be low until the economy begins to rise. IF you had a government that was willing to invest in the near and far future – you would see them offering interest free loans to companies that will be there with ‘green collar’ jobs – for that, too, is the way forward.

Only one problem with that – the UK government is shite at thinking forward (could be said about business, too) they would rather someone else do it then buy in the stuff they need when everything has recovered.

Imagine buying all the ‘green’ technology from the US? What a waste!!!!!!

Yes, with Will, the fossilised public sector is largely not competent to take us out of this, and Maggie’s answer of privatising didn’t work. For sure the EU push has for a long time been for competition to provide services, but in the context of a strong public sector that can provide the needed direction – we have a very weak public sector that massively wastes human resources and doesn’t look beyond our island’s coast, and an even weaker political class. It may take another 20 years for a new political class to emerge, sensitive to globalisation and the evidence that it provides of better ways to run the country.

Renault
I may work my way through these during the course of the day . Renault was a private company it was started by someone called Renault and traded privately and successfully for almost a century during which time all the value of the company was built up( not of course by the state ) before hitting problems not unlike the British motor Industry. the probolems it ran into were doe to its monopolistic position and the inherent lack of marjet discipline . The highly protectionsist French manner contributed no doubt
For a brief period the state intervened in the 80s ( and it is an example of a successful, state intervention admittedly ) , before it was returned to the private sector in the early 90s .
The character of the period of state intervention ( unlike our disastrous flop with BL ) was not that of creating jobs it was of losing jobs selling non core assets and stripping back the operation to its basics . It was in fact the sort of thing that night be achieved by the nasty asset strippers of out Anglo Saxon model
You are talking about a vanity project and a highly protectionist country who are in a position to protect such an industry . The result is that despite an anti business Labour Government being in situ over here we have still ( as the worst performing country in the anglosphere) achieved more than double the sclerotic Frech economy’s growth( GDP 92-2001 is 2.1 to 1.1) .In France, the private sector , in this case , was so incestuous and quasi statist that the state was actually more efficient and applied the necessary scalpel .

And also if you think that, say, employing teachers “removes resources from people and companies who can create jobs”.

If you employ more teachers you have to pay them, you pay them with tax payers money. That money cannot be spent on goods and services which will cost jobs and will be raised, eventually through taxation which is via income tax and NI is a direct tax on jobs. It is a disincentive to risk taking and so on. The astonishing sums thrown at education in the last ten years have tested to destruction the socialist idea that hosing a problem with money solves it and I would ay it has been then worst failure of New Labour on a bang per buck basis .
This is not creating jobs it is creating costs

. The Japanese for example are much further up to their eyeballs in debt and their economy hasn’t collapsed.

Yes thats right Sunny , Brown came up with his 40% rule when we could just as easily have had a 160% rule which Japan managed. Do you have any idea why he did this ? It seems not !
We are not Japan and we cannot run the sort of debt they can we are at the edge of borrowing now and while admittedly we are a lot better off than had we been in the Eurozone a run on the pound is not a good thing it shows no-one wants to invest in this country . Labour have run out of other people`s money and other people’s children’s money as well

7 – where’s the money to come from is a good question. … uk yeah just a bit /….

Don are you serious about this ? I have read some of your stuff before and you are not that stupid . I know there is a case for “quantitive easing ” ie printing money , a demonstration of the appalling state we have reached. Why not throw it at non productive jobs so everyone feels better , might do a bit of good I suppose but obviously this would not be the point. The point is to start recovery and that cannot come from state idiots doing community interface through face painting seminars .

You seriously think taxing working people jobs and companies and diverting the money into silly leftist tokens is on ?

Newmania
If it looks like a job, talks like a job, walks jauntily like a job, then it’s a fucking job.
No it is not. If your ‘job’ is say digging holes and then filling them in again , the sort of thing the army used to do to keep my father occupied with in the army, it is not a job . Its just moving stuff about
as many fucking people as fucking possible are in fucking employment and therefore able to fucking contribute both to the fucking economy and to the fucking tax take that’s needed to prop up your fucking heroes in the fucking financial sector – you know, the fucking fuckers that fucking caused this fucking clusterfuck in the fucking first place – in an effort to stop things becoming totally fucked.
Perhaps Mr. Cheesy you have not yet found employment ? When you eventually graduate to a noble profession like selling hamburgers or soemthing you will notice that however keen you are to apply mustard fried onions and the like this will avail you nought if no-one can afford to buy them. Consider the futility of collecting the customers money so as to employ a burger flipper thus rendering them unable to buy said comestible That is your idea .

You are a joke aren’t you, you have my pity .

We need to educate and train our unskilled workforce to a semi skilled level and the semi skilled to a skilled level. What we must not do is create large numbers of non-technical jobs – policy advisers, race advisers , administrators etc on the government payroll. In particularly, we need to concentrate on mechanical, electrical ,electronic, process engineering and chemical/biochemical engineering areas of expertise. Move 75% of the budget for post 16 years education/training for humanities education to technical educationsee – see article by Dyson Observer . Only 4% of undergraduates and fewer end up in profession. Perhaps no tuition fees for those reading engineering and science at university.

There’s a good link between this topic and the one on Liberal Fascism.

What makes me laugh abut this recession is how it gives keyboard loaner socialists the confidence to espouse their irrelevant 19thC idealism. Suddenly, they feel they can tell everyone that capitalism has failed and privatisation has been a disaster. FFS, get a grip.

What you are proposing has already been tried by messers Hitler and Mussolini.

“What you are proposing has already been tried by messers Hitler and Mussolini.”

I’ll have some of what you’re on, please, it must be whacked out.

Charlie, we have been hearing for years about the need to train more scientists and technologists – but the reality for too many has been low salaries or no relevant job. The years of spin were years of high salaries for actuaries and non-managers and public sector and quango people who spouted aspirations not reality or did those non-jobs that we keep on seeing advertised, years of denigrating expertise. To change that needs leadership that we don’t have from the politicians or from senior civil servants.

.
.
think a big internal stimulas is required in the UK as in the U.S, The post above has very good ideas on where the money ought to be spent.

believe it will come from government debt (and not taxes – can yu see these going up this year?….and not cutbacks – well maybe at the margins but not really worth thinking about).

Govt debt will be bought by whom?
people out side the country.
so. why should they buy our debt if the value of the currency is going to go down, i.e the value of their holding is going to keep on going down with no end in sight.

Foreign money in the city (40% of the city) has walked away from the UK. The UK is not a good bet.

so how do we make the debt interesting to outsiders…by increasing the yield on it. This interest rate may just become too expensive – i.e the cost of our debt is just too high.

who decides what is too expensive? I would say that this depends on alternatives options.

I am no economist, but to say that the value of the pound does not matter does not make sense. Looking at Japan…I can;t as I do not know enough about it.

All I can say is that UK is in a situation very similar to the U.S. The dollar is underwritten by the chinese so they are ok. we our out in the cold. Should we not be looking for a suger daddy too.

Digging holes, then filling them in is still a job (albeit not a particularly enthralling one), so as long as it’s a paid job, I’m fine with that. Besides, that kind of job’s in demand with the water companies and cable TV merchants – and they’re private. And I too have a job where I (corporately) service bankers on demand. So nerrr.

“Where’s the money to come from? As ever, it is probably a mix of borrowing money, raising taxes”

Well done Don.

You are suggesting that the cure for a heroin overdose is more heroin. I’m not so sure.

I (corporately) service bankers on demand.
Lap dancer ?

“One fundamental problem now I think universally acknowledged is that there aren’t enough jobs for all the people who are looking for work.”

Erm, certainly not universally acknowledged, no. There aren’t enough jobs offering the pay that the workers are willing to do the job for. Or, as an alternative, a business cannot create enough value from employing labour to cover the cost of that employment.

Which is a very different statement indeed. When correctly formulated the question can thus be answered in a number of different ways.

If we take the first, we could perhaps solve the unemployment by reducing the income received if one does not work. This would raise the relative value of that low paid work.

If the second we might think about, say, lowering the minimum wage. Thus there would indeed be jobs at the lower pay rates which business could indeed make pay.

No, I know that no one here would agree with either of those and I’m not entirely serious myself either. I’m just trying to point out that there is no such thing as “not enough jobs” just like there is no such things as ” not enough oil”, “not enough water” or anything else. There are not enough “at current price levels”. And the thing to do is to change the price levels so that supply and demand do indeed balance.

Which is of course exactly what is being advocated on these make work schemes. They will be paid for by taxes. That means that the real incomes of those in work will decline so as to pay for those to do the new work.

Just as I’m advocating: incomes decline, thus pricing those currently out of work into it.

Oh, and as to hte value of the Green New Deal and the like. Haven’t seen all the numbers but, for example, the Severen Barrage, by hte Govts own numbers, will lose 27 billion pounds. That’s making us poorer, not richer.

[28] Well, Tim, at the end of the day that is what will happen. It happened in Italy under Mussolini and it will happen here whether Labour get back, Cameron gets in or we find a Mussolini all of our very own.

Global capitalism, as the Chinese well understand, creates levels of income inequality both between and within countries that are incompatible with the practice of freedom as we have enjoyed it for all our lifetimes and before.

***
You’ve got to love New Mania, haven’t you? The private security guard has a job but the copper doesn’t. The defence counsel has a job but the judge doesn’t. And the boys and girls on South Eastern trains had jobs until their firm went bankrupt and the government took it over, when, although they were behaving in exactly the same way with the same results, hey presto, they didn’t!

What would we do without him?

“If we take the first, we could perhaps solve the unemployment by reducing the income received if one does not work. This would raise the relative value of that low paid work.”

And also increase the incentive to turn to shoplifting, burglary, armed robbery and other criminal activities.

Lap dancer ?

Nope, at least not with my hairy back ‘n balls. But thinking about it, if bankers were forced to endure me lapdancing them – that could be considered adequate punishment…

You’ve got to love New Mania, haven’t you? The private security guard has a job but the copper doesn’t. The defence counsel has a job but the judge doesn’t. And the boys and girls on South Eastern trains had jobs until their firm went bankrupt and the government took it over, when, although they were behaving in exactly the same way with the same results, hey presto, they didn’t!
What would we do without him?

Mike I would hate to dissuade you from your no unreasonable affection but you are cunningly muddying what are actually quite clear waters . Other than an often proven inability to do anything well there is no reason why the state should not run companies and if they do it half well( unlikely ) the jobs are the same jobs . These jobs a re required by customers ( they might be rail passengers for example ). There have been many advocates of such a wheeze ranging from the Soviet Union to East Germany with predictably awful results.
That does not mean that it wishes to assist the economy , the government can create jobs by building ‘Orkney railways’, on hitherto undreamt of suspension bridges and employ bemused ex-bankers to stare at sheep from their gleaming new machines. They would be better off throwing money in the sea . That is what is being proposed .

I agree there are some things that are sensibly handled best by the state to a greater or lesser extent .Defence education and health for example . There may be although I doubt it , a case for more Policemen Nurses and teachers . It cannot be that it answers a need to create prosperity however because it creates the reverse . It makes costs born by taxpayers who would otherwise spend his cash on who knows what new exciting product which someone would have to make. I`d say now was a bad time for that sort of thing hmmm ?
You do pick some interesting examples though and will I admit there are grey areas . Perhaps a couple of thousand more judges , then just to show I `m not prejudiced . You can pay.

There are three proposals there I could support. But, you can tell there’s a but: “And fourthly, we need many more care workers to meet rising need and expectations. More childcare workers to help every child get the best start in life…”

No, sorry, emphatically no. What about more recognition of the vital role parents play in giving that good start to their children? Say longer maternity leave, longer paternity leave. Say, not forcing single parents into employment rather than caring for their children. Say, strengthening employee’s rights to flexible working patterns. And that’s just off the back of this fag packet in front of me.

If you really are obsessed with employment as a measure of success, just think of the job opportunities this would create for the childless. But practical as opposed to rhetorical recognition of parenthood as a public good is long overdue, and surely an economic downturn is the perfect opportunity to begin remedying that.

“We are not Japan and we cannot run the sort of debt they can we are at the edge of borrowing now and while admittedly we are a lot better off than had we been in the Eurozone a run on the pound is not a good thing it shows no-one wants to invest in this country ”
.
.
.
.
with regards to the Eurozone – at present, when tectonic shifts are taking place, is the past a good indicator of the future?

I wonder.

34 – “No, sorry, emphatically no. What about more recognition of the vital role parents play in giving that good start to their children? Say longer maternity leave, longer paternity leave. Say, not forcing single parents into employment rather than caring for their children. Say, strengthening employee’s rights to flexible working patterns. And that’s just off the back of this fag packet in front of me.”

I agree with all of those, but I think that should be combined with having more (and better paid) childcare workers.

Countries with the highest level of child well-being recognise the vital role parents play through employment rights, but also have much more extensive and affordable childcare services which parents can make use of when they need/want to. Key thing is to give them the choice – not forcing them to go to work rather than caring for their children, but equally not preventing them from working because the cost or quality of childcare makes it unviable.

“Countries with the highest level of child well-being recognise the vital role parents play through employment rights, but also have much more extensive and affordable childcare services which parents can make use of when they need/want to.”

This is pure sentiment – measures of ‘child well being’ are generally rot. (According to the UN a child living in a nation of peasant farmers all of whom went out to work each day and gathered exactly the same number of turnips would be better off than the children in the UK. As long as they had ten books in their house.)
Anyway, my opinion is that *families* with the highest level of child well-being recognise the vital role that parents play in their childs lives by bringing up their children well. I can’t think of any reason why I should have to pay for another person to have and rear a child – the nation most certainly is not the optimal level for a community and even if it were, why place the burden upon employers to support and keep jobs for those on parental leave rather than the ‘community’ at large?

Donpaskini, it seems we’re not so far apart as I first thought. I’ve been considering the Every Child Matters agenda, recently, and learnng that it contains some rather peculiar assumptions, and I guess I may be guilty of transferring some of my unease onto your post, apologies. Nevertheless, in what follows, I’m reminded of the old joke about asking for directions, only to be told “I wouldn’t start from here.” I think major social change is needed to improve child welfare, and I can’t see it happening any time soon, despite the clear current evidence that our existing socio-political paradigms have been, to put it mildly, found wanting.

“Key thing is to give them the choice – not forcing them to go to work rather than caring for their children, but equally not preventing them from working because the cost or quality of childcare makes it unviable.”

I think I am still worried by society’s emphasis on paid employment, that somehow the profit motive should remain more important than giving our young people a better start, from which it follows that most jobs have higher social status than does parenting. From this perspective, offering more, better-motivated (which I guess is your purpose behind higher pay) childcare workers is like offering biofuel from virgin crops – the underlying problem of people living far away from jobs, goods and services is not addressed. In the same way, the aspirational lifestyle we are encouraged to lead privileges employment status and disposable income above parenting.

The impact of early childhood experience is grossly underestimated – there is evidence that the children of women given pain-relief in labour are more likely to develop opiate addictions, for example. There is clear evidence of the deleterious effect on a child’s emotional well-being if they are sent to nursery from an early age. Extended breastfeeding has tremendous emotional as well as physical benefits for the child (not to mention the mother), so, while expressed breast milk is way better than formula. it s still very much third best (being breast-fed by another woman than your mother is second best, if you’re wondering.)

Yet working parents of both sexes feel under enormous pressure to return to work early – the prospect of losing a job that your employer won’t keep open (eh, #37?) is a much more immediate pressure than intangible damage to your child that may take years to manifest itself. So, yes, force employers to offer better arrangements to working parents, but, more importantly, boost the status of parenting as a worthwhile occupation in its own right.

Especially now, when its not the “cost or quality of childcare [that] makes it unviable” for parents to work, but the basic fact that the jobs are not there.

Getting parents of young children into work is easy.

Many of them will lack experience of paid work but they will all have at least one skill, by definition: childcare.

Will there be enough childcare vacancies though?

Yes, because all those parents going back to work will need someone to look after their children during the day.

Parents can simply be paid for looking after each other’s kids.

Its so simple, its retarded.

38 – I think in practical terms we’d agree on policy aims.

Higher pay for childcare workers is a bit about better motivated workers, but to be honest much more about reducing poverty, particularly amongst women and children.

I’m happy to have a look at the ‘clear evidence’ against sending children to nursery from a young age, but I’m sceptical (just as I am sceptical of the claims from the other side of ‘clear evidence’ that children always benefit from growing up in a household where parent or parents are working). There are millions of parents who choose to go back to work when their children are still young, and rely on the availability of nursery care.

I think the best people to decide when to go back to work after the birth of a child is the parent or parents themselves, and that it is equally undesirable to force them back through lack of employment rights as it is to prevent them from doing so because the quality or availability of childcare isn’t there.

stable families supported by strong communities is the ideal aim….

we are distant from this. our emphasis has to be on the latter at present (as it is easier to fix as a problem). In this context nurseries play a vital role.

40 – Dr Penelope Leach etr. al. are producing interesting studies that seem to point in this direction. (That site uses frames, so the second link in particulay may be dubious.) In “The quality of different types of child care at 10 and 18 months: a comparison between types and factors related to quality (Leach et. al., 2006), available via the above links, the authors inter alia present an overview of a fairly large body of existing literature that appears to support this contention, e.g.:

More time in non-maternal care across the first four and a half years of life predicted more problem behaviour, particularly antisocial and aggressive behaviour, at 4-5 years of age. These effects were only partially mediated by quality of childcare. (NICHD 2005).

[NICHD = National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network.]

DP: There are millions of parents who choose to go back to work when their children are still young, and rely on the availability of nursery care.

I wonder, though, how much it is actually seen as a choice, and not as either economic necessity, or needed in order to maintain one’s professional status. It’s clear that such parents will, accordingly, in the main have to rely on nursery care, and equally clear that, this being the case, such care should be of a high standard. But if even good nursery care still does not prevent difficult behaviour at primary school age (and does that then set the tone for later life?), then it is no better than sticking plaster, when the underlying problem is parents’ perception that they cannot maintain a good standard of living or social status without being in work, and that I think is the attitude that we should be working to change. From this perspective, expanding provision of nursery care, regardless of quality, is perpetuating the problem.

41 – In this context nurseries play a vital role.

Would you be willing to expand?

speak to some who runs a nursery. She (most likely) will clarify. Happy to put yu in touch with someone.

Oh, ok. I just thought from the strength of your assertion you must have had more to add, yourself, and I would have liked to find out what that might be. Please don’t trouble your acquaintances on my account.

can add more … though it is not my role to educate other on what role nurseries play in the community.

Think what strengthens a community. children and adults are both part of the community.

How do nurseries – with their specialist skills and training add to the quality of life of both the adult and the child. Where are the Brits in terms of their parentiing skills. [[[and that in itself is an excellent subject for an article]]]

and taking it further like the school the nursery itself is also a hub of the community. Through it children and parents hook up with others in the community. In that respect it is more important than the post office but not necessarily more than the corner shop .

a hub has the potential to be a super hub too. is a community anymore than a networks of hubs, superhubs and so on.

i see a lot of investment and development in this area,