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
Tuesday, 16 July 2013
Apparently I'm Destitute
It continually amazes me what various campaigners consider "Minimum" as in 'minimum wage," and "minimum" benefit levels. While attempting to write something completely separate about the potential benefits to abolishing business rates I came across an article about how much benefits are worth, and how (to quote the website) little this actually is. After a cursory glance, and a second, slightly longer one, it seems I should be claiming I'm a member of the downtrodden poor living below the poverty line. This is something of news to me.
..
The offending statistic was this: "The Minimum Income Standard of living in the UK is estimated to be around £161 per week, excluding rent and council tax, for a single person." A little digging suggests that the Minimum Income Standard is the level required for an 'acceptable' standard of living, as determined by a policy unit at York University (who in turn are funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation). Although I didn't do much investigation into the Foundation itself, it wasn't immediately obvious from the website whether they have a political bias.
So.. if we work backward we find that:
£161 a week net is £8,372 a year. Not much? Well yes and no...
Rent is usually the largest component of most people's expenditure, so simply excluding it gives a very biased statistic. Average rents in my region for a flat are £523. If we add this in we get:
£523 x 12 = £6,276 + £8,372 = £14,648
Now add in Council Tax (also not included above), assuming a rough average of Band B for my area;
£1,400 + £14,648 = £16,048.
£16,000 a year doesn't sound too extraordinary surely? Well again that isn't the whole story. If you want to earn a take home pay of £16,048 you need to account for income tax, national insurance, and for my demographic, student loans.
Add all this in and you get:
£16,048 + £2,097 income tax + £321 student loan + £1,461 NI = £19,927 Gross Salary
(This isn't accurate to the penny, but it is to pound).
A salary at this level would mean you were pretty much in the middle of the income bracket (i.e. on median salary). (Retrospectively I have a sneaking suspicion this is where the figure of 161 ultimately came from).
I accept that there is probably a standard below which we shouldn't let people fall, even if they make some seriously poor choices. I object to this being the same standard of living I manage to obtain by working a 35 hour week in a supposedly graduate level job, and while paying nearly £4,000 in tax!
Just to try and end on this on a slightly more macro-economic point. You can extend the logic of this type of statistic fairly easily. Let's say that the Rowntree Foundations own 'Minimum Income' level of £200/week is adopted as government policy. Widespread applause from lefties, the unemployable, and so on. That £200 a week (using the same figures as above) is about the same as a gross salary of £23,450. So, if you earn this amount or less (which is true for about 60% of the workforce), you might as well not work. What happens now? The cost of supporting the 20 million people no longer working is in the hundreds of billions; okay the tax take doesn't drop anything like as sharply as you'd expect because most of the tax comes from the top few %, but even so, no government could hope to borrow enough to cover the difference. Not to mention the number of industries and business which would just collapse because they had no workforce.
For anyone looking for a genuine minimum wage I suggest reading my previous article on this subject (working to live I believe),
Happy Trials,
/Z
..
The offending statistic was this: "The Minimum Income Standard of living in the UK is estimated to be around £161 per week, excluding rent and council tax, for a single person." A little digging suggests that the Minimum Income Standard is the level required for an 'acceptable' standard of living, as determined by a policy unit at York University (who in turn are funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation). Although I didn't do much investigation into the Foundation itself, it wasn't immediately obvious from the website whether they have a political bias.
So.. if we work backward we find that:
£161 a week net is £8,372 a year. Not much? Well yes and no...
Rent is usually the largest component of most people's expenditure, so simply excluding it gives a very biased statistic. Average rents in my region for a flat are £523. If we add this in we get:
£523 x 12 = £6,276 + £8,372 = £14,648
Now add in Council Tax (also not included above), assuming a rough average of Band B for my area;
£1,400 + £14,648 = £16,048.
£16,000 a year doesn't sound too extraordinary surely? Well again that isn't the whole story. If you want to earn a take home pay of £16,048 you need to account for income tax, national insurance, and for my demographic, student loans.
Add all this in and you get:
£16,048 + £2,097 income tax + £321 student loan + £1,461 NI = £19,927 Gross Salary
(This isn't accurate to the penny, but it is to pound).
A salary at this level would mean you were pretty much in the middle of the income bracket (i.e. on median salary). (Retrospectively I have a sneaking suspicion this is where the figure of 161 ultimately came from).
I accept that there is probably a standard below which we shouldn't let people fall, even if they make some seriously poor choices. I object to this being the same standard of living I manage to obtain by working a 35 hour week in a supposedly graduate level job, and while paying nearly £4,000 in tax!
Just to try and end on this on a slightly more macro-economic point. You can extend the logic of this type of statistic fairly easily. Let's say that the Rowntree Foundations own 'Minimum Income' level of £200/week is adopted as government policy. Widespread applause from lefties, the unemployable, and so on. That £200 a week (using the same figures as above) is about the same as a gross salary of £23,450. So, if you earn this amount or less (which is true for about 60% of the workforce), you might as well not work. What happens now? The cost of supporting the 20 million people no longer working is in the hundreds of billions; okay the tax take doesn't drop anything like as sharply as you'd expect because most of the tax comes from the top few %, but even so, no government could hope to borrow enough to cover the difference. Not to mention the number of industries and business which would just collapse because they had no workforce.
For anyone looking for a genuine minimum wage I suggest reading my previous article on this subject (working to live I believe),
Happy Trials,
/Z
Sunday, 14 July 2013
Out of Time
So, in usual style I've struggled to find anything to write about recently. While various ideas have come and gone (a Defense of Politicians, Walking in Test Match Cricket, Education Education Education), I'm going to revert back to more or less where this blog started - reviews. I just finished watching the movie "In Time", and, as expected, it wasn't that good. However, it is a prime example of a film which 'could' have done some very interesting things...
--
A good sci-fi film needs a good premise. This is where we (the audience) buy into the rules of the internal universe. The Premise needs to set out what, in this world, the characters can, and can't do, and what their motivations and cultural norms are.
"In Time's" Premise is that Money = Time has actually been made true. You buy things with time, you get paid in Time, and, barring violent intervention, you die when you run out of time.
Herein is our first problem. Where does the Time come from in the first place? In the modern world money comes from two sources, firstly the banks conjure it out of thin air by fractional reserve banking, and secondly governments (or central banks) print it. As long as the amount of actual money roughly matches up with the value people place on the goods and services in the economy everything is fine (and if its out of sync slightly you get inflation or deflation). However... if Time = Money how does this work? Unfortunately the film doesn't ever give us an answer to this question, and even less so about how the super rich have accumulated their millions of stored years.
(A second point here - because everyone's personal Time is ticking down all the (pardon the word) time the economy is constantly losing value. This is comparable to you only being able to use money once before it lost value - pretty soon you'd run out of money).
In-universe the time=money premise also generates problems. It costs 2 hours to buy bus ride that covers a 2 hour walk. Why would I pay for the bus?? If the bus ride lasts 20 minutes then taking the bus costs me 2 hours 20 minutes, and walking costs me 20 minutes less. In a very real way (in this setting) taking the bus brings me 20 minutes nearer to death then walking does.
Next problem in the premise is how you transfer time (apparently you just hold hands with people and 'will'?? it to happen) - this is just way to easy to exploit. Probably a useful plot mechanic, but would seem to make sleeping borderline suicide unless your in a triple locked room with someone you really trust pointing a shotgun at the door.
Character-wise we also have some problems. The central character is a factory worker who also happens to be a pro-wrestling champion, pro-poker player, crack-shot with a gun, special agent level evasive driver and Olympic long distance runner. He also managed to acquire all of these skills while working 2 shifts a day in a factory to earn 4 hours to keep his mother alive. Again the question how arises... There are few things more annoying in films then central characters who acquire miracle level skill-sets with no real explanation.
I'm not even going to mention the scene where the limo survives four vans worth of guys open up on it with machine guns, suffering nothing more than some scratched windows.
Ideas
What then, could have been done better? What scenes flirted with brilliance and then damp squipped?
Where Time comes from - this should have been answered, or at least hinted at.How about a nice dystopian view that the government really can just create Time? But since not everyone can live for ever (population, resources etc) then the world is broken down into tiers. The inner tier of Immortals really are just that, and can create Time out of nowhere. The tiers then filter down - the 'party' magnates, and super-officials who deal in millions of years, the national leaders, and so on all the way down to the plebs. You get your 25 years, plus whatever the next tier up decide to pass on in exchange for goods and services and then you die. And the whole thing kind of works as long as the people at the top don't splash the cash so to speak (or let anyone know you can just conjure it out of thin air). Hence; Timekeepers.
The Timekeepers should have been done better. Cillian Murphy did a heroic job at playing that most feared of alignments; Lawful Neutral, but you can't help feeling that with 50 years of training, experience, marksmanship practice and so on, that the Timekeepers should have little trouble running people to ground and or just shooting them dead. The ending in particular was a joke. Yay I ran down the fugitives... damn I ran out of time and died. Seriously? If your that forgetful how do you reach 70 years old?? The premise that he came from the ghetto so kept his clock low is completely undercut by the assumption that when one lives in hours and minutes one has an extremely good sense of remaining time. Or one is dead.
The twist I was really hoping for here is that the Timekeepers didn't actually need Time at all. (Hey I've got a leather trench coat and a glock - hence I must be immune to SOME rules). If they're the agents of the immortals running the whole system, and their job is to make sure no one realises just how short the stick they got given was, then it would make sense that they are de facto outside the rat race. They can't be bribed, bought, slowed down or in any other way deflected (apart from death - being shot didn't seem to stop Leon for long). In this world the final scene plays out as it did, apart from Raymond Leon (somehow) loses his gun. They have the discussion about Time. They all watch his clock. It ticks down to 0. They continue to stare, and then both get shot because you've missed that while watching the clock you've stopped watching what else he's doing. Aside from the irony of Mr "I'm a pro arm-wrestler" losing to his own trick, this would also do a much nicer job of tying in the "resistance is futile" line. You really can't win, because they aren't playing by the same rules.
On that note after Timberlake and girlfriend have met their end to Leon the closing scenes should have been consequence to a society when the workers stop working. The rich continue as normal, oh they import food from different regions and some of them fly off while the interruptions are resolved, but all the people in the ghetto suddenly find out that having a month rather than a day is great, but not having food because the guy who runs the shop, or drives the transport lorries, or workings in the process plant, have all bummed off because they got given freebies.
So that's my suggestion - Murphy kills Timberlake and arrests his plus one if killing faux-teenage girl bank-robbers isn't done in cinema these days (she didn't have blue or even red hair so no plot immunity from me). The proles riot, loot and die because the system has been screwed with. The rich survive, and the end? The bureaucrats who run the world note down some loss of Time in Region 21 due to disturbances, and just adjust the numbers to bring everything back into alignment.
If I were immortal, and had an immortal secret police/special forces unit to keep things running, I would not be derailed by a factory worker with a stub nose stuck in his socks.
Happy trails,
/Z
--
A good sci-fi film needs a good premise. This is where we (the audience) buy into the rules of the internal universe. The Premise needs to set out what, in this world, the characters can, and can't do, and what their motivations and cultural norms are.
"In Time's" Premise is that Money = Time has actually been made true. You buy things with time, you get paid in Time, and, barring violent intervention, you die when you run out of time.
Herein is our first problem. Where does the Time come from in the first place? In the modern world money comes from two sources, firstly the banks conjure it out of thin air by fractional reserve banking, and secondly governments (or central banks) print it. As long as the amount of actual money roughly matches up with the value people place on the goods and services in the economy everything is fine (and if its out of sync slightly you get inflation or deflation). However... if Time = Money how does this work? Unfortunately the film doesn't ever give us an answer to this question, and even less so about how the super rich have accumulated their millions of stored years.
(A second point here - because everyone's personal Time is ticking down all the (pardon the word) time the economy is constantly losing value. This is comparable to you only being able to use money once before it lost value - pretty soon you'd run out of money).
In-universe the time=money premise also generates problems. It costs 2 hours to buy bus ride that covers a 2 hour walk. Why would I pay for the bus?? If the bus ride lasts 20 minutes then taking the bus costs me 2 hours 20 minutes, and walking costs me 20 minutes less. In a very real way (in this setting) taking the bus brings me 20 minutes nearer to death then walking does.
Next problem in the premise is how you transfer time (apparently you just hold hands with people and 'will'?? it to happen) - this is just way to easy to exploit. Probably a useful plot mechanic, but would seem to make sleeping borderline suicide unless your in a triple locked room with someone you really trust pointing a shotgun at the door.
Character-wise we also have some problems. The central character is a factory worker who also happens to be a pro-wrestling champion, pro-poker player, crack-shot with a gun, special agent level evasive driver and Olympic long distance runner. He also managed to acquire all of these skills while working 2 shifts a day in a factory to earn 4 hours to keep his mother alive. Again the question how arises... There are few things more annoying in films then central characters who acquire miracle level skill-sets with no real explanation.
I'm not even going to mention the scene where the limo survives four vans worth of guys open up on it with machine guns, suffering nothing more than some scratched windows.
Ideas
What then, could have been done better? What scenes flirted with brilliance and then damp squipped?
Where Time comes from - this should have been answered, or at least hinted at.How about a nice dystopian view that the government really can just create Time? But since not everyone can live for ever (population, resources etc) then the world is broken down into tiers. The inner tier of Immortals really are just that, and can create Time out of nowhere. The tiers then filter down - the 'party' magnates, and super-officials who deal in millions of years, the national leaders, and so on all the way down to the plebs. You get your 25 years, plus whatever the next tier up decide to pass on in exchange for goods and services and then you die. And the whole thing kind of works as long as the people at the top don't splash the cash so to speak (or let anyone know you can just conjure it out of thin air). Hence; Timekeepers.
The Timekeepers should have been done better. Cillian Murphy did a heroic job at playing that most feared of alignments; Lawful Neutral, but you can't help feeling that with 50 years of training, experience, marksmanship practice and so on, that the Timekeepers should have little trouble running people to ground and or just shooting them dead. The ending in particular was a joke. Yay I ran down the fugitives... damn I ran out of time and died. Seriously? If your that forgetful how do you reach 70 years old?? The premise that he came from the ghetto so kept his clock low is completely undercut by the assumption that when one lives in hours and minutes one has an extremely good sense of remaining time. Or one is dead.
The twist I was really hoping for here is that the Timekeepers didn't actually need Time at all. (Hey I've got a leather trench coat and a glock - hence I must be immune to SOME rules). If they're the agents of the immortals running the whole system, and their job is to make sure no one realises just how short the stick they got given was, then it would make sense that they are de facto outside the rat race. They can't be bribed, bought, slowed down or in any other way deflected (apart from death - being shot didn't seem to stop Leon for long). In this world the final scene plays out as it did, apart from Raymond Leon (somehow) loses his gun. They have the discussion about Time. They all watch his clock. It ticks down to 0. They continue to stare, and then both get shot because you've missed that while watching the clock you've stopped watching what else he's doing. Aside from the irony of Mr "I'm a pro arm-wrestler" losing to his own trick, this would also do a much nicer job of tying in the "resistance is futile" line. You really can't win, because they aren't playing by the same rules.
On that note after Timberlake and girlfriend have met their end to Leon the closing scenes should have been consequence to a society when the workers stop working. The rich continue as normal, oh they import food from different regions and some of them fly off while the interruptions are resolved, but all the people in the ghetto suddenly find out that having a month rather than a day is great, but not having food because the guy who runs the shop, or drives the transport lorries, or workings in the process plant, have all bummed off because they got given freebies.
So that's my suggestion - Murphy kills Timberlake and arrests his plus one if killing faux-teenage girl bank-robbers isn't done in cinema these days (she didn't have blue or even red hair so no plot immunity from me). The proles riot, loot and die because the system has been screwed with. The rich survive, and the end? The bureaucrats who run the world note down some loss of Time in Region 21 due to disturbances, and just adjust the numbers to bring everything back into alignment.
If I were immortal, and had an immortal secret police/special forces unit to keep things running, I would not be derailed by a factory worker with a stub nose stuck in his socks.
Happy trails,
/Z
Wednesday, 8 May 2013
Writ In Water
Today's headlines are all remarkably uninteresting. Hence, in vague acknowledgement that I am not living up to the various mantles I make liberty of, here is something a little different.
In memory of an article in Blackwood's Magazine, 1818.
How wrong you were.
**
In memory of an article in Blackwood's Magazine, 1818.
How wrong you were.
**
Given without hope,
For hope implies expectation,
Given in memory,
Of a thought never
told.
Rose that never fades,
Petal that never
opens,
Thorn that never softened,
Stem that never broke.
Given freely,
In a world of indebted
gifts,
Given in honour,
Of a code never known.
Seeded in a yellow river,
Dreamed in a silver
bar,
Budded in red vines,
Flowered in white
rain.
Given without hope,
For hope requires
acceptance,
Given in memory,
A thought never told.
May 08, 2013
/Z
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