Off Topic Political Debate

Agree that we should try to define work but it does not have to produce a material item. Cleaning is work and as you say doctoring is work. Perhaps work needs to be something that is "useful" rather than just "play" (now we have to define play )

I think we should leave the quantity of rewards for now as it will lead back to the nitty gritty - let's agree what work is - and who should or should not do it and how much of it they need to do

 

I often work for 8 hours in a day. Payment= zero. Pleasure immense if the weather is fine. I also sometimes work at things I do not enjoy, plumbing for one, but when it works, again I am happy. The difference is that these days I can do it for myself, and I have always enjoyed being my own boss, rather than having others decide the best way to do something. Some like myself like to be in control of their lives and sometimes take risks, while others feel far safer when they are instructed what to do and are not asked to think too much. So really am I working or playing with my time?

 

It's like voluntary / fundraising work. I think you have to derive satisfaction and / or enjoyment from it or it becomes just another chore. Thankfully, I enjoy mine immensely!

 

I don't think it helps by stereotyping city traders and bankers, I'm sure some, if not all, support charities and get involved with fundraising. Is it their wealth that make them such an easy target for abuse?

 

I would rather have a capitalist system based on supply and demand with opportunities for all than a system where the government is deciding who to favour. When governments interfere there is a tendency for them to want to control everything.

Secondly I know of several former nurses that have prospered greatly in business, including my eldest daughter.

 

Sadly the values of worth in this world are all tits up.....

That is one reason for having a strong taxation system to redress the balance.

It is also very pleasing to see footballers like Ighalo sending much of his wages to support family and charities in his home in Nigeria.

Having said that a world where the large corporations manipulate the masses to increase profits is not the best

Freud's nephew Bernay used Freud's theories to develop marketing and PR in the US

Sex and mastery over others was used to sell anything and it worked:

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I think the notion of market forces deciding our future is highly questionable.


As a species we need to develop and we have that opportunity every day....
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When whole professions lag behind in the payment league (and also sometimes in terms of prestige) such as nurses, policemen, people working in old peoples homes, social workers etc. so much so that these professions have problems of recruitment as a result, then the government has to step in and 'favour' those groups. There is something fundamentally wrong in a situation where so many necessary professions are hovering close to the economic borderline - this cannot be regulated by 'the market'.

 

Your eldest daughter "screwed up" and had to be bailed out by you if I remember an earlier post of yours correctly - and as the daughter of a self confessed millionaire she is hardly typical is she of nurses?

 

There is much wrong with our system but it is still better than the drastic meddling alternative you would propose. The UK government have taken steps to raise the 'living wage' to address the recruitment of jobs seen to be as unattractive. This is the carrot, maybe reducing benefits is the correct stick to fill these vacancies rather than rely on migrants. Nobody should turn down work and still expect handouts from the state.

Increased taxation on higher earners has proved to be ineffective in gaining more revenue. Increased taxation on businesses will result in more unemployment, France is a perfect example of this failed policy.

 

You see - this drags us straight back down to current politics and economics. Perhaps anyone with training and average intelligence can do these jobs or maybe we look through rose tinted glasses once we mention welfare and social workers. Perhaps in a decent society there would be less need for these jobs as families would be there as they once were.
You are valuing a job by its pay and then comparing not with starving Africans but with wealthy Westerners - this is where I always see the "green". I thought we had tried to move above this debate on from there. To look at what makes people happy in what they do - I would think a good social worker has a great life in not only doing something they like but which is well regarded by others. A footballer too enjoys what he does - he just may happen to also earn bucket loads of cash but is it the cash or playing football that is important to him? Ighalo gives to his family - great but so do millions.
Once you reduce the value of a job to its market pay you sow seeds of discontent. I bet a lot of dustmen (or whatever the PC name is for them now) enjoy what they do more than someone working anonymously in an office surrounded by the same few faces every day.
Life is about far more than pay. Pay does not create happiness - that is internal. All money does is give you champagne instead of water. Is that really better?

 

My daughter certainly screwed up financially with our money but learned by the experience and later became a 'UK enterprising woman of the year'.
My point was under our system a nurse, or anybody else, on basic salary can become as successful as they want, there are no barriers.
I never claimed that she is now typical but she certainly was at the beginning of her career doing 12 hour night shifts.

 

Why do I have to compare everything to starving Africans Leo ? Can I advertize a job by saying I pay a 'competitive wage' ie. in comparison to Albania ? I am not reducing the value of a job by its pay......many nurses, social workers etc. love their jobs - but should this love be their only reward ? Many people in those professions cannot live on their wages without taking a second job - or do you want policeman on riot control who have spent the previous night working as bouncers ? You are also sadly mistaken if you think that an average intelligence and training alone makes a good social worker. Granted there may be Dustmen also who love their jobs - but I guarantee they do not love having to make their wage cover all of their bills, particularly if they live in the London area.

 

You miss my point. From my favourite poem: "If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself" The same goes for wages. You cannot solely compare your target groups with those better off. There will always be those better and worse off.
In recent posts we have tried to elevate the discussion beyond mere rewards. The discussion of rewards always reduces everything to money and politics and then the argument is about the proportion of wealth each should have and we all have fixed views on this. Yorkie took us into the area of thinking about work for work's sake. Nobody will ever be made happy by comparisons. Happiness lies in accepting who you are and what you do and can do. Unhappiness arises from comparison and jealousy.
Life and the world are not fair - your political solution to make it fair is no more valid than for example a Tory's.
My dad did 3 jobs in trying to improve his lot - so yes - if a policeman wants the latest i-phone etc etc then he can do extra work if his wages do not allow him to get it on those. I would argue that the policeman maybe better lowering his "wants" -aren't you the one who wants less consumerism? Why do you ignore the plight of 6 billion people when you make your comparisons? Don't you use the argument about the world needing to have 4 times the resources if everyone keeps up demanding ever more?
Again you make assumptions about what I think; I do not think that an average intelligence and training ALONE makes a good social worker - or do you deny that people all have qualities of care and compassion - and whatever other attributes you consider necessary? I believe that people with the right qualities for a job can get training etc to help them do it. However there are jobs that people cannot do because they do not possess sufficient natural skills - I could never become a professional footballer however much somebody trained me.
People with less natural skills and without education,training or hard work will compete for jobs with many more than those who possess these things in abundance - supply and demand will mean you pay more for a rare commodity - gold will always be more valuable than sand.

 

I don't think that you are getting my point Leo. The situation is particularly acute in London where in order just to get by with rent many people are compelled to have not 2 but sometimes 3 jobs. Without moonlighting in that way the poor would have been gone from London a long time ago - like a form of ethnic cleansing. If eg. a policeman is having to work extra hours somewhere else, then the quality of his work will suffer. I am not talking about i-pods or anything else - everybody should be able to live on a 40 hour working week, and that is not the case for many people in the UK. On the other hand you can achieve the same thing through rent controls - which I would be in favour of. Just how much rent can be charged for some of the bug ridden rabbit hutches which are offered in London without the government being able to step in with controls. The rental for a run down bed sit (+ bugs) in Camden Town is the same as for a flat which is 3 times bigger in a fashionable area of Hamburg 5 minutes from the Elbe.

 

Many people cannot afford to live in London that is why they commute from outside. The government obviously needs to provide more housing for key workers but rent control is a bad idea. The governments policy in restricting benefits including housing benefit should help stop unscrupulous landlords from keep pushing up rents. I agree with a benefit cap even if it means moving recipients to less expensive areas in the UK.
Why should the state pay for people to live in desirable areas that the average family cannot afford.?

 

We are not talking here about the state paying for anyone. Up to now there has been no mention of housing or any other benefit. Just a discussion about 'work' and those getting more, or less for it. A normal working person should be able to live and pay rent based on a 40 hour working week - that is possible in every other capital in Europe - so why not in London ?

 

I understand your point but you are now focussed on a microcosm. I and lots of other people had to move away from our parents' areas to start with and then to move back later if we could - nobody has a foregone right to live in London. This though is the discussion about party politics - you and the Right all have your own solutions and you won't agree and probably all think you are correct and on the moral high ground. In its simplest form it is about whether to cut the cake more equally or to focus on increasing the size of the cake. The Right think your focus does not work and vice versa - you can argue till the cows come home but will convince neither side.

This thread though and certainly the more recent debate has opened my eyes to the wider context. All over the world people try different systems to make life better for themselves or others but nobody has found the magic potion. You will not make peoples' lives better by either out and out capitalism and consumerism nor by socialism. To find happiness you have to learn to love what you have. You do not like me talking about Africa or the 6 billion - but they matter. A person can be happy and content with very little - yet if they are then exposed to someone who has more they may become discontent. It is not what they have that matters but who they compare themselves with. Hence the beloved (but ridiculous) definition of relative poverty. When your policeman or social worker is discontent despite being one of the richest people on the planet there is zero hope that party politics will solve it.

Why do people only care about the so called poor in the UK - or wherever they define their focus area? It is chance that defines where you are born and live. Is the moral high ground found by worrying about the slightly less well off in the 5th richest country on Earth?

I have said before and will again that real compassion encompasses everyone - and to pretend we are doing good by caring about less than 1% of the human population is just kidding ourselves. Get angry if you like about rich bankers - 0.00001% of the population; then you can forget that 99% of the population get angry at you and me. Until people care about everyone then they are kidding themselves if they claim they are the caring ones. You will never solve the world's problems without tackling the numbers of people on the Earth - not by socialism, communism, capitalism, environmentalsm or anything else. It makes a good debate though so is fun if not productive. I have heard that phrase used about something else though too.

I suspect for Buddhists, Jesus Christ - if not many of his so-called followers and other spiritual groups' care and compassion relate not to the narrow but to the broad spectrum of mankind and perhaps beyond

 

The big picture and the idea of caring for the whole World is all very well Leo but I have more possibility of influencing on a local level and so that is where I begin. Do you know how many people in western countries will be faced by the possibility of poverty in their old age (because they will have no meaningfull pension at the end) this will be the end for the generations brought up with the zero hour contract, for those who have only ever 'got by'- and will you try to console them by telling them that someone, somewhere, is worse off.

 

I am sure that I've read somewhere that the average UK person has less personal savings than in most western countries. The problem is in people's perception that the state will always provide enough in their old age so less responsibility is taken personally. Due to retired people living longer and less workers to pay benefits it is even more important to spend less on consumables and stash away as much as poss. Private pensions have become less attractive as annuity rates have plummeted also the recent government attack on buy to let has reduced the investment opportunity for many.

We must all know people that spend lavishly during their working life only to find the money dries up considerably in later life. I have a friend that was always taking his wife on cruises, later it transpired he had run up a huge credit card debt so they had to sell their house to drastically downsize. As he was self employed for many years I think his pension is relatively small so he now relies on his wife's nurses pension.

 

So your care is for the relatively poor in the 5th richest country in the world. Can't say that it excites me to think like that.
Still if you are not prepared to think big picture let's at least then only talk about the UK as I know very little about the pensions etc in your "western countries"
In the UK all old people will get a decent pension -as that is what our state already provides. My dad has lived off a single pension and nothing else for the last 18 years since my mum died. All his neighbours are better off than him but he does not need consoling. That is for envious people. Future pensions will not be affected by zero hours.
Why do certain groups like to focus on certain mantras - the poll tax, the bedroom tax, zero hours. All of these get abused in their use. Sticking to zero hours all it means is that you have no guarantee on the hours you will work. You may be paid very well per hour and may also get to work many hours - but they are simply not fixed - and that suits very many people - especially working parents. But Zero hours is nice and emotive isn't it - it makes us all think of Dickensian London and the bowls of gruel. It is how certain groups work - focus on one little strap line and use it to whip our society. I care less about someone who is fed, clothed and housed having less than their neighbour than I do about people in true poverty. If someone in relative wealth in human terms is made unhappy by their neighbour they need to lose the green. It will always be the case. But perhaps some will be happy when they have ironed out a tiny pocket of richness in the City of London and can sleep at night forgetting true poverty.

You say you influence on a local level - but do you really think you do - all I see is right versus left squabbling over their riches.