Welfare is big business in the modern world. The British government spends somewhere around £250 billion a year and that figure is only set to rise forever. A rather random documentary (Benefits Britain 1949) I found buried in the 4od archive approaches this issue from a different direction - what was the original welfare state like?
**
I'm not going to regurgitate 3 hours of pseudo-documentary in written format, but the sake of the comparison I do want to draw I'm going to touch on a couple of key points;
1.) The focus on getting people working is overwhelming - pretty much without exception. Even the cash benefits that were provided are focused on working.
2.) The system is probably just as biased as the modern welfare state, but in the opposite direction. Traditional family unit with problems? - lots of support and guidance, single mother? Pretty much discarded. Although the conclusion from the program itself was that the modern system is 'fairer' it doesn't seem objectively any difference to prioritize single mothers over family units or vice versa, there is still a bias in the system.
3.) Pensioners fell through the cracks - this is probably inevitable given that when the welfare state was first introduced life expectancies meant most pensioners could expect to survive a handful of years, paid for by family and savings. In the modern world where you can expect thirty plus years post retirement a different solution is no doubt required.
4.) The terminology and language is different. In today's world we have "benefit" "entitlements" both of these are very inclusive, positive terms. A 'benefit' is, almost by definition a good thing, while an 'entitlement' does not imply any stigma or obligation. Under the 1949 system you made a "claim" on for "assistance". First off it was something you had to ask for (and might not get) and secondly it was a stop gap measure while you got back on your feet.
5.) Not directly related, but since this crops up all over the place it bears reminding - the common misconception that in the modern world you somehow pay for your benefits by paying tax and national insurance. This is flat out wrong. Under the original format National Insurance was exactly that - Insurance. You paid a premium (your contributions) and then when you needed it you could make a claim. Under this system you really could make an argument for "I paid in, so now I want something back." In the modern world all taxes are soaked by paying for current spending, there is no contributory or savings principle. When you worked your taxes paid for the benefits of those claiming at the time. When your claiming benefits you are expecting others to support you.
6.) The 1949 system does have an inbuilt assumption that if you could work then there is work to be had. In the aftermath of the second world war a combination of vast infrastructure projects and a decimated workforce meant there was always a job going. Is this still true today?
Following on from this final point you can do an interesting thought experiment over the cost of providing employment.
Let's say you want to hire someone to work in your business - what are the costs?
(For the sake of this I'm ignoring things like the cost of advertisements, and the theoretical time cost of interviews etc).
Salary - the minimum hourly rate in the UK is £6.31 (over 21s). Assuming you want someone for 35 hours a week that's £11484.20 a year, you would also need to pay employers national insurance (£522). For the sake of convenience this adds up to pretty much £12,000.
Overheads - This is harder to judge since it depends in part on what the role is, and how much equipment it requires. During my stint working in a slot machine arcade my only overheads to the business were a couple of cheap shirts and a tacky waistcoat (£50 tops). On the other hand overheads for a full office set up can easily run for £5-6,000 a year.
Leaning on the pessimistic side here (since the service sector accounts for such a large chunk of the unskilled economy through call centers and 'admin') that gives total of £18,000.
So, if your new employee can generate £18,000 of value for the company everything is good right?
Well no - first off if they earned you can extra £18,000 then you've broken even, plus you have all the hassle of hiring and manager people. If you want a decent return on your investment (say 15%) then that person actually needs to be bringing in £20,700. Unfortunately even that figure is a bit low because your also going to have to pay corporate tax at 20%, which bumps the figure up again to £24,840 (say £25,000 for ease).
Going back to our 1949 example the combination of lower taxes, a bigger 'cash in hand' economy, and lower wages (the example being a labourer may expect to earn, accounting for inflation, £15 a day, compared with a minimum of £50.48 for an 8 hour shift), means that figure is going to be a lot lower. Lower costs to business of taking on new staff means more potential recruitment, while laxer employment laws also make it less of a risk since its easier to get rid of people.
In today's wold though you need to be generating £25,000 of revenue for a business for them to justify a single minimum wage job. How many people can actually do that? What skills and abilities are required to achieve that level?
Unfortunately these are questions somewhat out of the scope of a single blog entry, but it opens the way nicely for a topic I keep trying to discuss and can never find a good way of tackling - productivity. For a long time I've been arguing government spending in Britain is out of control, as is our benefits system. A client state of voters has been created, in a world designed for the benefit of politicians. The equation is brutally simple - tax the minority to provide handouts to the majority, who will then vote you back into office. But if you (theoretically) wanted to escape from this mess what has to happen? Simply put spending has to come down, and income has to go up.
The current attempt at this is the 'growth and stagnation' approach. IF the economy can be poked into growth, while holding spending levels steady in absolute terms, then the combination of increasing revenue, inflation, and static spending should begin to close the deficit gap. The alternative is to actively smash large chunks of government spending, while actively encouraging a more inclusive workforce. The key to this second part is productivity.
Businesses are profit seeking entities, if you cost a business £25,000 and earn them £50,000 then you should be employable. Regardless of the trade, craft or sector this holds true. The unemployable are unemployable because, in the most basic terms, a business doesn't think you earn them more than it costs to hire you (accounting for discounted risk and so forth). 1949 appears to have been successful in getting people into work by keeping the cost side of that equation down; yes you may be unskilled, inexperienced and part time, but it only costs a third of the 21st century price to hire you, so you only have to be a third as productive.
The modern welfare and employment system has created a trap for itself - rising costs of employment in the form of employers national insurance, business taxes, stringent hiring and firing laws, and minimum wages have all combined to make it more expensive for businesses to hire people. At the same time a generous welfare system has made it economically viable to simply not work, this in turn leads to those who do work to demand higher minimum wages (so they are actually earning more than those who don't work), and so the cost of employment goes up, and the whole thing spirals.
Productivity itself is a fleeting beast in economics. Training, skills, experience and ability all play a part, as does social conventions and attitudes. But its unfortunately not something that can be conjured out of thin air by waving money about. Education certainly plays a part, and so that will be my starting point next time.
Happy Trails,
/Z
Wednesday, 28 August 2013
Wednesday, 14 August 2013
Unnecessary Violence
Torture seems to be the in-thing in media these days. Whether its film, TV or literature everything now has a 'torture' scene. It maybe says a lot about the 21st century that sex scenes are now considered boring and have pretty much been replaced with an obligatory ten minute scene involves electrodes, bolt croppers, scalpels or the common yo-yo. Increasingly the question is becoming "why?".
...
The precipitating factor for this piece is the 4od 'drama' Utopia.
To spare the wrath of the Fire God, Knife Missile and Angel of Vengeance Upon Those Who Spoil I will at this point insert:
** SPOILER ALERT**
Episode I of Utopia has, as expected, a torture scene. Without going into the details it is: a.) somewhat nauseating to watch, b.) no doubt effective, and c.) arguably has what will now become a cult threat: "Wilson.. Wilson I've got... the spoon now.." .
My problem with torture scenes is pretty much the same objection I have to torture in real life - its largely pointless. As any number of police forces through the ages have proven people will agree to anything and implicate anyone in anything once you start bolt croppering parts of their anatomy off. But, as military intelligence has also found over the years, the quality of the intelligence you gain by this method is only marginally better than the intelligence provided by psychics, astrology and random guesswork.
In practice for torture to be an effective information extraction tool you need know, in advance:
1.) That the victim really does know what you want to know,
2.) Have some way of checking whether what they've told you is true before you let them go.
3.) There not to be some kind of 'duress' code that renders the whole activity pointless.
Utopia fails resoundingly on this; torturing people who don't know what your on about will just result in a.) meaningless garbage (she's dead, the address is in my computer), or worse yet intelligible garbage (Easy enough to see how the scene in Inglorious Bastards just ends up with the German soldier in the ditch picking a random spot on the map). Why then do supposedly super-skilled, Illuminati-esque intelligence agents persist in these ridiculous scenes??
The answer of course is depressingly obvious - its a cheap way to introduce tension and ""drama"" for a production without the writing, directing or acting to produce genuine suspense. This is where the threat of torture is far more intellectually satisfy and often leads to far better scenes. One can quite believe that when confronted with Michael from the first Godfather film calmly, quietly, explaining to you what will happen if you do not immediately tell him what he wants to know that people buckle. But to pull that off the writer has to have created a character who is fearsome and awe inspiring, the actors need to pull off both dread and ruthless confidence, and the director needs to make the whole thing work. Alternatively you get a B-list actor with a tub of chillies...
(A note here about the episode of Sherlock in which Mycroft is attempting to persuade Irene Adler to give up her phone. As Sherlock rather directly points out torturing Adler is pointless because of point 3 above, and once the phone is fried any further expenditure of effort is futile).
To add to the stupidity of the whole torture theme, the only scenes where the hero does get tortured and does know something they never tell it anyway - Scarface, Lethal Weapon, various Bond films, at least one of the Under Siege franchise, Stargate (film and TV series) etc etc etc.
Its time for film and TV to move past the obligatory torture scene, and maybe time for some fairly serious introspection if, as a society, we now see people getting their eyes cut out with a spoon as a selling point of a series.
/Z
...
The precipitating factor for this piece is the 4od 'drama' Utopia.
To spare the wrath of the Fire God, Knife Missile and Angel of Vengeance Upon Those Who Spoil I will at this point insert:
** SPOILER ALERT**
Episode I of Utopia has, as expected, a torture scene. Without going into the details it is: a.) somewhat nauseating to watch, b.) no doubt effective, and c.) arguably has what will now become a cult threat: "Wilson.. Wilson I've got... the spoon now.." .
My problem with torture scenes is pretty much the same objection I have to torture in real life - its largely pointless. As any number of police forces through the ages have proven people will agree to anything and implicate anyone in anything once you start bolt croppering parts of their anatomy off. But, as military intelligence has also found over the years, the quality of the intelligence you gain by this method is only marginally better than the intelligence provided by psychics, astrology and random guesswork.
In practice for torture to be an effective information extraction tool you need know, in advance:
1.) That the victim really does know what you want to know,
2.) Have some way of checking whether what they've told you is true before you let them go.
3.) There not to be some kind of 'duress' code that renders the whole activity pointless.
Utopia fails resoundingly on this; torturing people who don't know what your on about will just result in a.) meaningless garbage (she's dead, the address is in my computer), or worse yet intelligible garbage (Easy enough to see how the scene in Inglorious Bastards just ends up with the German soldier in the ditch picking a random spot on the map). Why then do supposedly super-skilled, Illuminati-esque intelligence agents persist in these ridiculous scenes??
The answer of course is depressingly obvious - its a cheap way to introduce tension and ""drama"" for a production without the writing, directing or acting to produce genuine suspense. This is where the threat of torture is far more intellectually satisfy and often leads to far better scenes. One can quite believe that when confronted with Michael from the first Godfather film calmly, quietly, explaining to you what will happen if you do not immediately tell him what he wants to know that people buckle. But to pull that off the writer has to have created a character who is fearsome and awe inspiring, the actors need to pull off both dread and ruthless confidence, and the director needs to make the whole thing work. Alternatively you get a B-list actor with a tub of chillies...
(A note here about the episode of Sherlock in which Mycroft is attempting to persuade Irene Adler to give up her phone. As Sherlock rather directly points out torturing Adler is pointless because of point 3 above, and once the phone is fried any further expenditure of effort is futile).
To add to the stupidity of the whole torture theme, the only scenes where the hero does get tortured and does know something they never tell it anyway - Scarface, Lethal Weapon, various Bond films, at least one of the Under Siege franchise, Stargate (film and TV series) etc etc etc.
Its time for film and TV to move past the obligatory torture scene, and maybe time for some fairly serious introspection if, as a society, we now see people getting their eyes cut out with a spoon as a selling point of a series.
/Z
Sunday, 11 August 2013
Judgmental Hypocrisy
It virtually always annoys me when my counterpart in a conversation, discussion or debate wheels out a conversational device which is guaranteed to end any further meaningful exchange. This linguistic H-bomb is nothing more than the apparently innocuous phrase "Everyone is entitled to their opinion," or something similar. I've finally worked out what it is that annoys me so much about this approach...
..
To prevent myself falling into the very faux-pas I've just described (and I am going to skirt very close to it at times), I'm going to get some key points out first;
1.) I have a set of values, principles and ethics, and I judge others on their actions and motivations, based at least in part on my own sense of morality. This is my right (in the sense of an innate ability) as a sentient, free-willed individual.
2.) I'm willing to listen to people's justifications for their actions, and even where those actions don't coincide with my own morality, I may still agree with them if they follow on from others' own first principles.
3.) If you are presented with an action which stems logically or naturally from a first principle you either agree with, or can not disagree with (not the same thing), you can not reasonably then condemn the action.
4.) Once you've established someone holds irrational (defined below) opinions and isn't willing to change them once the logical fallacy is pointed out, then any further discussion is pointless, and their judgement on the related subject is valueless. An "irrational" opinion in this sense is one which is logically impossible given the same person's stated, un-waivable first principles. As an example using current events -
Q1. "Do you think that it should be up to the inhabitants of a region/area to decide their sovereign affliations?"
A. "Yes,"
Q2. "Do you agree that the people of the Falklands/Gibraltar voted overwhelming to remain a British Overseas Territory?"
A. "Yes"
Q3. "So what do you think should happen with Gibraltar,"
A. "It should become part of Spain."
(I've actually had a version of this conversation three times over the last couple of weeks.)
Note: importantly the final answer here isn't the result of some unspoken additional principle I've omitted, it's a function of the opinion (Q3) being formed before considering the principles (Q1 and Q2), and then people being disinterested in changing their opinion in the face of evidence or constructed arguments.
5.) I don't believe in objective morals.
(Objective in this sense means independent of the people making the actions and judgements. If an action is objectively 'wrong' than it would be condemned by people from all cultures and backgrounds, aliens, dolphins, and so on. The main basis for objectively morality is some form of deity. If you accept the existence of a religious God, and said God has stated idolatry is wrong, then that's that, its not up to humans to argue the point).
..
Given all this then, allow me to present what I'm going to term "Judgmental Hypocrisy."
The situation isn't that unusual, something has come up in conversation which is part of the social institution to which getting smashed and screaming at the top of your voice, football hooliganism, Ibiza and glossy magazines are all part of. The response (usually from me) is to query why people choose to do this kind of thing; its inelegant, uncivilized, expensive and going off the number of people who subsequently end up sick, unconscious, or regretful also doesn't seem to have much to recommend it.
What I want at this point is for someone who has done this kind of thing (the latest example being 18-30s holidays), to explain and defend the motivations behind doing whatever it is I'm condemning. Maybe it's about inclusion into a social group, maybe its a right of passage, maybe it's to distract people from the humdrum of their normal lives by consuming so much alcohol they lose the ability to think, maybe its about easy sex or escapism. All of these are things I can at least appreciate, even if I don't agree with them.
The response I get instead is usually "Well everyone's entitled to do what they think is fun - they probably don't think reading a book or watching cricket is fun."
On the face of it this seems like an unassailable position, a short extension of the right to action or speech that everyone has by the fact of their existence, and, from some people (genuine traditional Liberals of the camp who agreed you shouldn't tell someone they were about to accidently kill themselves since that would be intruding on their freedom of action) I might even accept it. Unfortunately however this position is also shipped with a dripping of condescending sarcasm which adds the unspoken additional line "and since what you enjoying doing isn't really fun then your just wrong."
And herein comes the Judgmental part; what the people making the "yes but not everyone agrees with you," approach are actually saying is "You can't disagree with us because everyone has their own opinion, but your opinion is wrong," and it's this that really infuriates me. As soon as you want to criticize my position, you have to accept my criticism of your position, and this brings me back to the points above.
In the example under point 4.) I explained that in these type of cases the thought process has gone: This is what I do (i.e. talk about celeb magazines) > Someone doesn't think this is a great use of time (opposing opinion) > Everyone has their own opinion, and I'm right (Judgmental Hypocrisy (JH)) > End of conversation.
This loop is both unbreakable and can not be broken down or analysised. There is no basis for the opinions or actions being discussed, and there is no continuation possible after the JH moment. Therefore any attempt at return criticism is impossible because there isn't an argument or logic chain to criticize. One of my precepts has always been that actions and motivations should be founded on well thought out first principles. This doesn't have to be massively technical, but someone asks you "Why?" you should be able to answer, and that answer should be coherent. The approach adopted by the JH-es is the exact opposite- you don't need a reason or an explanation, because no one is entitled to question your opinion.
I doubt this is ever going to change, but at least next time someone tells you "Everyone's entitled to their opinion," you can think to yourself, "Ah, what you mean is you don't know why your doing what your doing, and you don't care."
If that makes you depressed, haughty or resigned I leave up to you!
/Happy Trails
Z
..
To prevent myself falling into the very faux-pas I've just described (and I am going to skirt very close to it at times), I'm going to get some key points out first;
1.) I have a set of values, principles and ethics, and I judge others on their actions and motivations, based at least in part on my own sense of morality. This is my right (in the sense of an innate ability) as a sentient, free-willed individual.
2.) I'm willing to listen to people's justifications for their actions, and even where those actions don't coincide with my own morality, I may still agree with them if they follow on from others' own first principles.
3.) If you are presented with an action which stems logically or naturally from a first principle you either agree with, or can not disagree with (not the same thing), you can not reasonably then condemn the action.
4.) Once you've established someone holds irrational (defined below) opinions and isn't willing to change them once the logical fallacy is pointed out, then any further discussion is pointless, and their judgement on the related subject is valueless. An "irrational" opinion in this sense is one which is logically impossible given the same person's stated, un-waivable first principles. As an example using current events -
Q1. "Do you think that it should be up to the inhabitants of a region/area to decide their sovereign affliations?"
A. "Yes,"
Q2. "Do you agree that the people of the Falklands/Gibraltar voted overwhelming to remain a British Overseas Territory?"
A. "Yes"
Q3. "So what do you think should happen with Gibraltar,"
A. "It should become part of Spain."
(I've actually had a version of this conversation three times over the last couple of weeks.)
Note: importantly the final answer here isn't the result of some unspoken additional principle I've omitted, it's a function of the opinion (Q3) being formed before considering the principles (Q1 and Q2), and then people being disinterested in changing their opinion in the face of evidence or constructed arguments.
5.) I don't believe in objective morals.
(Objective in this sense means independent of the people making the actions and judgements. If an action is objectively 'wrong' than it would be condemned by people from all cultures and backgrounds, aliens, dolphins, and so on. The main basis for objectively morality is some form of deity. If you accept the existence of a religious God, and said God has stated idolatry is wrong, then that's that, its not up to humans to argue the point).
..
Given all this then, allow me to present what I'm going to term "Judgmental Hypocrisy."
The situation isn't that unusual, something has come up in conversation which is part of the social institution to which getting smashed and screaming at the top of your voice, football hooliganism, Ibiza and glossy magazines are all part of. The response (usually from me) is to query why people choose to do this kind of thing; its inelegant, uncivilized, expensive and going off the number of people who subsequently end up sick, unconscious, or regretful also doesn't seem to have much to recommend it.
What I want at this point is for someone who has done this kind of thing (the latest example being 18-30s holidays), to explain and defend the motivations behind doing whatever it is I'm condemning. Maybe it's about inclusion into a social group, maybe its a right of passage, maybe it's to distract people from the humdrum of their normal lives by consuming so much alcohol they lose the ability to think, maybe its about easy sex or escapism. All of these are things I can at least appreciate, even if I don't agree with them.
The response I get instead is usually "Well everyone's entitled to do what they think is fun - they probably don't think reading a book or watching cricket is fun."
On the face of it this seems like an unassailable position, a short extension of the right to action or speech that everyone has by the fact of their existence, and, from some people (genuine traditional Liberals of the camp who agreed you shouldn't tell someone they were about to accidently kill themselves since that would be intruding on their freedom of action) I might even accept it. Unfortunately however this position is also shipped with a dripping of condescending sarcasm which adds the unspoken additional line "and since what you enjoying doing isn't really fun then your just wrong."
And herein comes the Judgmental part; what the people making the "yes but not everyone agrees with you," approach are actually saying is "You can't disagree with us because everyone has their own opinion, but your opinion is wrong," and it's this that really infuriates me. As soon as you want to criticize my position, you have to accept my criticism of your position, and this brings me back to the points above.
In the example under point 4.) I explained that in these type of cases the thought process has gone: This is what I do (i.e. talk about celeb magazines) > Someone doesn't think this is a great use of time (opposing opinion) > Everyone has their own opinion, and I'm right (Judgmental Hypocrisy (JH)) > End of conversation.
This loop is both unbreakable and can not be broken down or analysised. There is no basis for the opinions or actions being discussed, and there is no continuation possible after the JH moment. Therefore any attempt at return criticism is impossible because there isn't an argument or logic chain to criticize. One of my precepts has always been that actions and motivations should be founded on well thought out first principles. This doesn't have to be massively technical, but someone asks you "Why?" you should be able to answer, and that answer should be coherent. The approach adopted by the JH-es is the exact opposite- you don't need a reason or an explanation, because no one is entitled to question your opinion.
I doubt this is ever going to change, but at least next time someone tells you "Everyone's entitled to their opinion," you can think to yourself, "Ah, what you mean is you don't know why your doing what your doing, and you don't care."
If that makes you depressed, haughty or resigned I leave up to you!
/Happy Trails
Z
Sunday, 4 August 2013
Vive l'Empereur
The French President has just said "non" to a re-negotiation of Britain's settlement with Europe. Queue surprise and anguish from the media. Are we really surprised by this? As was mentioned many years ago in an (as ever) accurate episode of the original Yes Minister series the French are our 'mistrusted allies' and international organizations are 'games played for national benefit.' What then should we be looking for from our ancient faux-friends in Gaul?
**
First off I need to get an important misconception out of the way - the pro, anti and unsure lobbies with regard to EU membership are actually talking about different things, and then therefore all conversation at present is meaningless.
The pro-EU argument is almost always couched in terms of economic impacts. Jobs lost, lack of access to the single market, lack of investment from areas outside Europe and so on. In the more serious articles there is then an attempt to show how these benefits outweigh the £10-12 billion a year cost of actually being in the EU in the first place.
The anti-EU argument is political and ethical - we are a sovereign nation and will remain so. I'm not sure whether it was intended as an insult but in a previous post I was described as a 'romantic nationalist' - a term I have since self-applied with gusto. While I can appreciate the economic impacts of European membership (or exit) these are ultimately a sliding scale which is not fully understood. That our courts are de facto no longer sovereign (despite the de jure claims), and that an entity other than our own elected Parliament can tax us is a situation which is not to be tolerated.
Unhelpfully however, this is not to argument you can factually resolve - just as the utilitarians struggle with the question of how many tubes of toothpaste is a naturally perky demeanor worth, a comparison of job creation vs sovereignty is not one that can be resolved by math alone.
Personally I'm all for common markets - in fact Britain had a larger network of free trade deals before it joined the Union than it has now. (We had to give up all our own trading rights to join the EU). The current deal between the US and EU that is being held up as a shining example of EU benefits only gets us more or less back to where the UK was before it joined the EU in the first place.
The economic objections raised by the likes of the TUC and, recently, Tokyo, would be mitigated by membership of a revamped EEA, and to the nay-sayers who worry that the cost of single market access is comparable to the full on cost of EU membership I say "fine." I'm happy to pay for the economic benefits, I'm not happy to pay for the ECHR to uphold the rights of rapists and murderers to have their living costs indirectly paid by me.
Britain's place in Europe has always been a bit odd. Religious, cultural and eventually historical loathing have lead us into war and conflict with just about every nation in Europe against just about every other nation in Europe. Our current attitude was almost certainly formed during the Long nineteenth century when Britain's global political and economic dominance allowed us to look to the rest of the world for our allies and trading partners, while keeping one boot firmly on the necks of any rising European powers (though admittedly one Frenchman proved to have a fairly boot-resistant neck). The cultural legacy of the world wars no doubt cemented that view, Britain does its own thing and regularly has to trot into Europe to sort things out. It's perhaps a pity our power and wealth stopped keeping up with our self-aggrandizement about a century ago.
This should be contrasted with the French and German views on the EU. Mr Hollande is directly quoted as saying he won't support anything that's not in the French national interest, while Germany has flourished with an artificially low exchange rate, and, increasingly, come to rule the EU nest thanks to its vast wealth and imperturbable constitutional courts (British equivalents take note). Britain needs to get over the view that we are doing everyone else a favor by playing along with the EU - we should be ruthlessly pursuing own our agenda, regardless of what that means to French farmers or Greek wine-merchants. If that means using the ultimatum of withdrawal to get what we want then fine.
While it doesn't really follow on cleanly, I'm just going to throw in a quick bit of maths (as ever). The costs to the UK last year of EU membership was £12billion (what we put in minus what we get back). According to Tokyo's recent lobbying we stand to lose "ten's of thousands" of jobs from a EU-exit. So... 99,999 jobs for £12 billion equals £120,001 per person. How about we just leave the EU and spend the money retraining anyone who lost their job?
And back to cricket...
Happy Trails,
/Z
**
First off I need to get an important misconception out of the way - the pro, anti and unsure lobbies with regard to EU membership are actually talking about different things, and then therefore all conversation at present is meaningless.
The pro-EU argument is almost always couched in terms of economic impacts. Jobs lost, lack of access to the single market, lack of investment from areas outside Europe and so on. In the more serious articles there is then an attempt to show how these benefits outweigh the £10-12 billion a year cost of actually being in the EU in the first place.
The anti-EU argument is political and ethical - we are a sovereign nation and will remain so. I'm not sure whether it was intended as an insult but in a previous post I was described as a 'romantic nationalist' - a term I have since self-applied with gusto. While I can appreciate the economic impacts of European membership (or exit) these are ultimately a sliding scale which is not fully understood. That our courts are de facto no longer sovereign (despite the de jure claims), and that an entity other than our own elected Parliament can tax us is a situation which is not to be tolerated.
Unhelpfully however, this is not to argument you can factually resolve - just as the utilitarians struggle with the question of how many tubes of toothpaste is a naturally perky demeanor worth, a comparison of job creation vs sovereignty is not one that can be resolved by math alone.
Personally I'm all for common markets - in fact Britain had a larger network of free trade deals before it joined the Union than it has now. (We had to give up all our own trading rights to join the EU). The current deal between the US and EU that is being held up as a shining example of EU benefits only gets us more or less back to where the UK was before it joined the EU in the first place.
The economic objections raised by the likes of the TUC and, recently, Tokyo, would be mitigated by membership of a revamped EEA, and to the nay-sayers who worry that the cost of single market access is comparable to the full on cost of EU membership I say "fine." I'm happy to pay for the economic benefits, I'm not happy to pay for the ECHR to uphold the rights of rapists and murderers to have their living costs indirectly paid by me.
Britain's place in Europe has always been a bit odd. Religious, cultural and eventually historical loathing have lead us into war and conflict with just about every nation in Europe against just about every other nation in Europe. Our current attitude was almost certainly formed during the Long nineteenth century when Britain's global political and economic dominance allowed us to look to the rest of the world for our allies and trading partners, while keeping one boot firmly on the necks of any rising European powers (though admittedly one Frenchman proved to have a fairly boot-resistant neck). The cultural legacy of the world wars no doubt cemented that view, Britain does its own thing and regularly has to trot into Europe to sort things out. It's perhaps a pity our power and wealth stopped keeping up with our self-aggrandizement about a century ago.
This should be contrasted with the French and German views on the EU. Mr Hollande is directly quoted as saying he won't support anything that's not in the French national interest, while Germany has flourished with an artificially low exchange rate, and, increasingly, come to rule the EU nest thanks to its vast wealth and imperturbable constitutional courts (British equivalents take note). Britain needs to get over the view that we are doing everyone else a favor by playing along with the EU - we should be ruthlessly pursuing own our agenda, regardless of what that means to French farmers or Greek wine-merchants. If that means using the ultimatum of withdrawal to get what we want then fine.
While it doesn't really follow on cleanly, I'm just going to throw in a quick bit of maths (as ever). The costs to the UK last year of EU membership was £12billion (what we put in minus what we get back). According to Tokyo's recent lobbying we stand to lose "ten's of thousands" of jobs from a EU-exit. So... 99,999 jobs for £12 billion equals £120,001 per person. How about we just leave the EU and spend the money retraining anyone who lost their job?
And back to cricket...
Happy Trails,
/Z
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