Reform UK - A symptom of all that is wrong?

[JagLover]

ATG said:

No one is claiming that you have to keep importing young workers for ever. It is not a Ponzi scheme. You just import some now to offset a proportion of the economically inactive elderly to lessen the immediate impact. You're just smoothing the transition to a smaller population with higher average age and associated higher retirement age.

The UK population is not forecast to fall. The ONS is predicting a rise of 7 million by 2060. This is however dependent on a net migration prediction of 245K a year, which is considerably lower than that experienced in recent years, so it may well be more than that.

One might almost say that you would need a managed immigration system in order to "only" have a population increase of 7 million, but apparently that is extreme to suggest.

[cheesejunkie]

s1962a said:

I was replying to a post that suggested that the indigenous folk wouldn't want to do these jobs and that we needed immigration. Thats not true, at the right price they would. If £50 an hour is a pie in the sky rate, then what rate do you suggest the indigenous folk would fill up the vacancies?

It's a false premise as I would take serious objection to differentiating between indigenous and others as a false dividing line. The word "indigenous" revolts me but I know why it's used.

Pay people enough. Don't make it about where they came from.

But current realities are that the UK needs immigration. Always has. Always will.

I can fully understand why some feel aggravated about that but the parties claiming to offer them solutions aren't offering solutions that will work. It's very easy to be opposition. It's much more difficult to take responsibility. Brexit demonstrated that in spades. once given control they didn't know what to do with it and floundered around looking for enemies to blame.

[ATG]

JagLover said:

JuanCarlosFandango said:

I wouldn't be surprised if part of our persistent productivity shortfall is that it's relatively cheap to employ people on low wages which are then subsidised by various benefits.

I suspect this was a large part of the reason for the creation of the "living wage" and its increases since. If the market can no longer deliver increases in pay then if it is mandated it might finally restart investment in reducing the demand for labour.

So long as we all recognise that the effect will be to make a load of jobs economically unviable and a load of terminally unproductive workers permanently unemployable, that's fine. Those people will cease making any economic contribution through employment and will instead subsist entirely on benefits and in the black market.

I have to say it is not obvious to me that you can beat British firms into being more productive with a big stick. It's a bit like the argument that be chucking them outside the supposed protectionism of the EU they'd be forced to become more vigorous and healthy because they'd be faced with greater international competition. It all smacks of cold showers and being forced to run round the game fields before breakfast rather than being a convincing economic policy.

[s1962a]

cheesejunkie said:

s1962a said:

I was replying to a post that suggested that the indigenous folk wouldn't want to do these jobs and that we needed immigration. Thats not true, at the right price they would. If £50 an hour is a pie in the sky rate, then what rate do you suggest the indigenous folk would fill up the vacancies?

It's a false premise as I would take serious objection to differentiating between indigenous and others as a false dividing line. The word "indigenous" revolts me but I know why it's used.

Pay people enough. Don't make it about where they came from.

But current realities are that the UK needs immigration. Always has. Always will.

I can fully understand why some feel aggravated about that but the parties claiming to offer them solutions aren't offering solutions that will work. It's very easy to be opposition. It's much more difficult to take responsibility. Brexit demonstrated that in spades. once given control they didn't know what to do with it and floundered around looking for enemies to blame.

Is indigenous an inflammatory term? What term would you use? I was referring to people who have roots already in the UK, or don't need to emigrate from another country, or require a permit to work here.

We are in agreement though. The whole immigration debate is upside down. We need to import labour to do the jobs we aren't willing to pay more for, or aren't willing to be done by "people already in the UK"

[cheesejunkie]

s1962a said:

cheesejunkie said:

s1962a said:

I was replying to a post that suggested that the indigenous folk wouldn't want to do these jobs and that we needed immigration. Thats not true, at the right price they would. If £50 an hour is a pie in the sky rate, then what rate do you suggest the indigenous folk would fill up the vacancies?

It's a false premise as I would take serious objection to differentiating between indigenous and others as a false dividing line. The word "indigenous" revolts me but I know why it's used.

Pay people enough. Don't make it about where they came from.

But current realities are that the UK needs immigration. Always has. Always will.

I can fully understand why some feel aggravated about that but the parties claiming to offer them solutions aren't offering solutions that will work. It's very easy to be opposition. It's much more difficult to take responsibility. Brexit demonstrated that in spades. once given control they didn't know what to do with it and floundered around looking for enemies to blame.

Is indigenous an inflammatory term? What term would you use? I was referring to people who have roots already in the UK, or don't need to emigrate from another country, or require a permit to work here.

We are in agreement though. The whole immigration debate is upside down. We need to import labour to do the jobs we aren't willing to pay more for, or aren't willing to be done by "people already in the UK"

It's not an inflammatory term if used appropriately. When misappropriated it is.

Roots in the UK is a meaningless term. But we both know the meaning.

Looking forward to someone explaining how we can have lower taxes, zero net immigration, no waiting lists and cheaper energy. It's easy to say, not so easy to do. If anyone is dumb enough to think they'd deliver on that they will get what they deserve. See also brexit.

[JuanCarlosFandango]

QJumper said:

That's quite possibly true, although I'm not sure how we'd fix that. Currently the only way we try to address that is via a mandated minimum wage. Other countries (Sweden for example) seem to have more success by dispensing with almost all government involvement in labour relations and leaving employers and workers to work it out betweeen themselves, via collective bargaining. Intererestingly, despite seeming to favour workers, it's amongst the highest for productiivity in Europe, has a very low level of days lost to strikes, and yet is amongst the most entrepreneurial, with Stockholm second only to silicon valley in billion dollar tech start ups.

I don''t know what the answer is for the UK, but it's clear that without either massive natural resources, or significantly increased productivity, then something needs to change. It would make sense for more money to distributed to the bottom end, not just out of a sense of social fairness, but for the practical benefit of releasing caplital into the hands of people who will spend it in the local economy, without the need for benefits or loan finance.

Thinking off the top of my head, I'd probably look to a way of freezing income taxes, and maybe even lowering them for the middle and bottom levels. Any benefits that are then required to fill a shortfall in low wages I'd be looking to finance via corporation taxes. Possibly with tax incentives for businesses based on how much they pay their workforce.

In my view, individuals carry too much of the tax burden. That was probably ok once, when businesses reinvested profits in the economy in order to drive growth. Now however, in a multinational environment, far less of that profit benefits the economy, and there's far greater opportunity for corporations to be parasitic rather than contributors.

I think restricting the supply of unskilled labour chasing marginal jobs is quite a neat way to solve it - it encourages employers to invest in technology and training to boost efficiency and drives up wages which attracts more people into employment and off benefits or out of less productive jobs. It also redistributes money to the poorest without needing taxes.

It has to be balanced against keeping costs reasonable enough to be attractive for investment and having enough people to do the jobs we really need. In my opinion though EU expansion, mass immigration and the drive to get everyone into university created a perfect storm of having practically unlimited cheap labour driving wages down and negating the need for improving efficiency while diverting people into unproductive activities and costing a fortune.

I agree to a point about the tax burden but ultimately its all borne by individuals, whether directly or in higher prices. The bigger problem seems to be that it falls on too few individuals.

[Hammersia]

s1962a said:

cheesejunkie said:

s1962a said:

I was replying to a post that suggested that the indigenous folk wouldn't want to do these jobs and that we needed immigration. Thats not true, at the right price they would. If £50 an hour is a pie in the sky rate, then what rate do you suggest the indigenous folk would fill up the vacancies?

It's a false premise as I would take serious objection to differentiating between indigenous and others as a false dividing line. The word "indigenous" revolts me but I know why it's used.

Pay people enough. Don't make it about where they came from.

But current realities are that the UK needs immigration. Always has. Always will.

I can fully understand why some feel aggravated about that but the parties claiming to offer them solutions aren't offering solutions that will work. It's very easy to be opposition. It's much more difficult to take responsibility. Brexit demonstrated that in spades. once given control they didn't know what to do with it and floundered around looking for enemies to blame.

Is indigenous an inflammatory term? What term would you use? I was referring to people who have roots already in the UK, or don't need to emigrate from another country, or require a permit to work here.

We are in agreement though. The whole immigration debate is upside down. We need to import labour to do the jobs we aren't willing to pay more for, or aren't willing to be done by "people already in the UK"

I don't believe it is morally right to import cheap labour to do back breaking farm work (for example) that we wouldn't do unless the wages were substantially higher.

If we do need MORE labour, then they should be paid the going rate for the job as if a UK born citizen was employed.

The extra costs added to food prices?

Believe it or not, those workers who are paid more end up spending more in the UK economy, particularly on discretionary spending items, and the welfare bill goes down. That is economic growth.

It's really very simple. And moral.

[StevieBee]

520TORQUES said:

StevieBee said:

How so?

Edited by StevieBee on Monday 15th January 13:43

I don't need someone knocking on my door to tell me when the bins will be collected. The engagement value of strategies like that are miniscule.

Oooh. Here we go then!

If you are the remotely bit interested then a couple of examples:

The work and projects I described have:

Saved Warwickshire County Council circa £950k annually (since 2014) in avoided disposal costs resulting from a decrease in food waste going in the rubbish bin. We knocked on around 40,000 doors. Our fees for that was around £85k.

Saved Hull City Council around £450k annually (since 2015) in avoided disposal costs through a reduction in household recycling contamination. Knocked 33,000 doors Our fees for that one were £100k.

In Hounslow in 2011, we boosted recycling to a level that led to a net gain to the council of some £220k. Can't remember the number of knocks for that one but think it was around 40k mark. Our fees were £60k.

That's just three examples. The combined economic benefit of these since the projects were delivered is around £15m. We charged at total of £245k so that's a return on investment to the local authorities of, what... 61:1 or something like that.

I'm not sure what your definition of 'miniscule' is but from where I sit, this ain't it.

Don't forget that money we saved those local authorities would have eventually landed with local taxpayers through their council tax. The revenue generated has contributed to council tax rises being less than they might otherwise have been. I don't know where you live but we've worked with around 160 local authorities over the past 20 years so there's every chance you have benefited from our work.

You're welcome.

It's a pity it is so difficult to recruit for these types of projects. Since 2016, less of them are being deployed for this very reason. It's no coincidence that recycling rates have flatlined and recycling contamination is increasing.

And it's not just about saving money. We have helped to make sure older residents were aware of the assisted collection services available to them, helped to make sure people were aware of changes to their services and provide other advisory services to assist local residents.

[cheesejunkie]

JuanCarlosFandango said:

I think restricting the supply of unskilled labour chasing marginal jobs is quite a neat way to solve it - it encourages employers to invest in technology and training to boost efficiency and drives up wages which attracts more people into employment and off benefits or out of less productive jobs. It also redistributes money to the poorest without needing taxes.

It has to be balanced against keeping costs reasonable enough to be attractive for investment and having enough people to do the jobs we really need. In my opinion though EU expansion, mass immigration and the drive to get everyone into university created a perfect storm of having practically unlimited cheap labour driving wages down and negating the need for improving efficiency while diverting people into unproductive activities and costing a fortune.

I agree to a point about the tax burden but ultimately its all borne by individuals, whether directly or in higher prices. The bigger problem seems to be that it falls on too few individuals.

As an employer of university educated people I love it when others tell me I'm not doing my job correctly. Ideas are welcome. Mental masturbation isn't.

I think restricting the supply of labour would screw the UK. Hopeless ambitions about it encouraging employers to invest in technology would prove fruitless as the money will move elsewhere. Hopeless PPE graduates are not going to save the country with their dodgy theories. They're demonstrably harmful and not productive. I think we'd do a lot better by kicking the lot of them out before worrying about immigrants.

The bigger problem is how tax falls more heavily on the middle and the uppers get away with paying less. Take a look at marginal rates. I'd vote for a party prepared to tackle that. None seem willing to. I'm not affected but I've family who are.

[JuanCarlosFandango]

cheesejunkie said:

As an employer of university educated people I love it when others tell me I'm not doing my job correctly. Ideas are welcome. Mental masturbation isn't.

I think restricting the supply of labour would screw the UK. Hopeless ambitions about it encouraging employers to invest in technology would prove fruitless as the money will move elsewhere. Hopeless PPE graduates are not going to save the country with their dodgy theories. They're demonstrably harmful and not productive. I think we'd do a lot better by kicking the lot of them out before worrying about immigrants.

The bigger problem is how tax falls more heavily on the middle and the uppers get away with paying less. Take a look at marginal rates. I'd vote for a party prepared to tackle that. None seem willing to. I'm not affected but I've family who are.

It's no surprise that an employer supports a unlimited supply of abour.

I didn't say you're not doing your job correctly. I haven't got a clue who you are or what you do, and I wasn't especially talking about graduate jobs anyway.

I agree about the tax burden falling disproportionately on the middle, but I think that's a sort of inevitability in any tax system.

[swisstoni]

StevieBee said:

520TORQUES said:

StevieBee said:

How so?

Edited by StevieBee on Monday 15th January 13:43

I don't need someone knocking on my door to tell me when the bins will be collected. The engagement value of strategies like that are miniscule.

Oooh. Here we go then!

If you are the remotely bit interested then a couple of examples:

The work and projects I described have:

Saved Warwickshire County Council circa £950k annually (since 2014) in avoided disposal costs resulting from a decrease in food waste going in the rubbish bin. We knocked on around 40,000 doors. Our fees for that was around £85k.

Saved Hull City Council around £450k annually (since 2015) in avoided disposal costs through a reduction in household recycling contamination. Knocked 33,000 doors Our fees for that one were £100k.

In Hounslow in 2011, we boosted recycling to a level that led to a net gain to the council of some £220k. Can't remember the number of knocks for that one but think it was around 40k mark. Our fees were £60k.

That's just three examples. The combined economic benefit of these since the projects were delivered is around £15m. We charged at total of £245k so that's a return on investment to the local authorities of, what... 61:1 or something like that.

I'm not sure what your definition of 'miniscule' is but from where I sit, this ain't it.

Don't forget that money we saved those local authorities would have eventually landed with local taxpayers through their council tax. The revenue generated has contributed to council tax rises being less than they might otherwise have been. I don't know where you live but we've worked with around 160 local authorities over the past 20 years so there's every chance you have benefited from our work.

You're welcome.

It's a pity it is so difficult to recruit for these types of projects. Since 2016, less of them are being deployed for this very reason. It's no coincidence that recycling rates have flatlined and recycling contamination is increasing.

And it's not just about saving money. We have helped to make sure older residents were aware of the assisted collection services available to them, helped to make sure people were aware of changes to their services and provide other advisory services to assist local residents.

Imho, in view of the large savings your company is helping to achieve, you, your company and its employees should be paid more from the outset.

[LF5335]

swisstoni said:

Imho, in view of the large savings your company is helping to achieve, you, your company and its employees should be paid more from the outset.

Is that so that he can staff these projects correctly? If so which indistry(ies) should lose their staff to fill his vacancies?

[isaldiri]

QJumper said:

Thinking off the top of my head, I'd probably look to a way of freezing income taxes, and maybe even lowering them for the middle and bottom levels. Any benefits that are then required to fill a shortfall in low wages I'd be looking to finance via corporation taxes. Possibly with tax incentives for businesses based on how much they pay their workforce.

In my view, individuals carry too much of the tax burden. That was probably ok once, when businesses reinvested profits in the economy in order to drive growth. Now however, in a multinational environment, far less of that profit benefits the economy, and there's far greater opportunity for corporations to be parasitic rather than contributors.

Income taxes I'd say probably aren't the right place to be honest to be looking at freezing or reducing rates. As things stand, they already are not particularly high compared to europe and if anything, this from the IFS shows that overall taxes should arguably be raised rather than reduced through social security type contributions as that's where the UK has an obvious deficit vs the rest of europe. If anything, for all the perception that taxes should be reduced, there might well be a good argument to be increasing the overall tax take through higher contributions both from employer and employee on the middle to bottom earners on this graph taken from

https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-key-questions/how....



Increasing corp taxes (well assuming they are actually paid properly in the first place) would be also definitely not be the area I think that should be increased and if anything it should really be reduced.

[Murph7355]

LF5335 said:

valiant said:

Wanting a fully costed manifesto from Labour. Take Reform’s numbers on faith.

NHS waiting list is currently around 7m and Reform are aiming to zero that. Exactly how are they proposing to do that and over how long and at what cost?

Labour critics want it all spelled out to the nth degree so how about Reform supporters answer the above.

I’ve been in corporate meetings a long time ago where people genuinely produced nonsense like in the link and then badged it as financial savings and a perfect solution. The whole thing is laughable.

https://assets.nationbuilder.com/reformuk/pages/19...

The critical aspect being that it is laughable no matter who is coming up with the dross. Labour, Tories, Reform. It doesn't matter who it is. It needs to stop.

But our system has us all fighting each other over just how unfair someone is being about their choice of rosette....

They are all the same....we need to find ways of changing it.

[Tom8]

QJumper said:

JuanCarlosFandango said:

I wouldn't be surprised if part of our persistent productivity shortfall is that it's relatively cheap to employ people on low wages which are then subsidised by various benefits.

That's quite possibly true, although I'm not sure how we'd fix that. Currently the only way we try to address that is via a mandated minimum wage. Other countries (Sweden for example) seem to have more success by dispensing with almost all government involvement in labour relations and leaving employers and workers to work it out betweeen themselves, via collective bargaining. Intererestingly, despite seeming to favour workers, it's amongst the highest for productiivity in Europe, has a very low level of days lost to strikes, and yet is amongst the most entrepreneurial, with Stockholm second only to silicon valley in billion dollar tech start ups.

I don''t know what the answer is for the UK, but it's clear that without either massive natural resources, or significantly increased productivity, then something needs to change. It would make sense for more money to distributed to the bottom end, not just out of a sense of social fairness, but for the practical benefit of releasing caplital into the hands of people who will spend it in the local economy, without the need for benefits or loan finance.

Thinking off the top of my head, I'd probably look to a way of freezing income taxes, and maybe even lowering them for the middle and bottom levels. Any benefits that are then required to fill a shortfall in low wages I'd be looking to finance via corporation taxes. Possibly with tax incentives for businesses based on how much they pay their workforce.

In my view, individuals carry too much of the tax burden. That was probably ok once, when businesses reinvested profits in the economy in order to drive growth. Now however, in a multinational environment, far less of that profit benefits the economy, and there's far greater opportunity for corporations to be parasitic rather than contributors.

We can never have good productivity where productivity is GDP divided by hours worked. Our state employment which does not contribute to GDP will never allow this. Isn't the NHS one of the biggest employers in the world?

[swisstoni]

LF5335 said:

swisstoni said:

Imho, in view of the large savings your company is helping to achieve, you, your company and its employees should be paid more from the outset.

Is that so that he can staff these projects correctly? If so which indistry(ies) should lose their staff to fill his vacancies?

Err, I don’t know.
Some employers are no doubt missing out on your valuable contributions because you work for your one.

[cheesejunkie]

JuanCarlosFandango said:

It's no surprise that an employer supports a unlimited supply of abour.

I didn't say you're not doing your job correctly. I haven't got a clue who you are or what you do, and I wasn't especially talking about graduate jobs anyway.

I agree about the tax burden falling disproportionately on the middle, but I think that's a sort of inevitability in any tax system.

I could have fun and games with that reply but I'll treat you with respect.

I don't support an unlimited supply of labour. Yes I'm an employer and yes I want applicants. But I'm not hiring cleaners, I'm hiring educated people.

I've nothing against cleaners, my mother worked as one once. If I had to I would.

It's not inevitable that the tax burden falls on the middle. It's a political choice supported by multiple electorates. Because they're easy pickings. That sort of fatalism leads to it being an inevitability and some voting for dumbass parties who promise rainbow dust, thankfully not in sufficient numbers. I'm serious, I'd love to see a party present a serious plan to deal with it and I'd vote for them, not going to happen but in the absence of it happening I'm not going to vote for pixie dust.

[LF5335]

swisstoni said:

Err, I don’t know.
Some employers are no doubt missing out on your valuable contributions because you work for your one.

They’re all missing out. I work for myself and only myself.

[isaldiri]

cheesejunkie said:

It's not inevitable that the tax burden falls on the middle. It's a political choice supported by multiple electorates. Because they're easy pickings. That sort of fatalism leads to it being an inevitability and some voting for dumbass parties who promise rainbow dust, thankfully not in sufficient numbers. I'm serious, I'd love to see a party present a serious plan to deal with it and I'd vote for them, not going to happen but in the absence of it happening I'm not going to vote for pixie dust.

The problem I suppose is that any serious plan to deal with it will mean (considerable) pain on the part of the public which no one is going to vote for when there's always a can to be kicked down the road.... you might vote for it but no one else will - which is why I suppose in part we are in the pickle that we are in today.

[QJumper]

JuanCarlosFandango said:

I think restricting the supply of unskilled labour chasing marginal jobs is quite a neat way to solve it - it encourages employers to invest in technology and training to boost efficiency and drives up wages which attracts more people into employment and off benefits or out of less productive jobs. It also redistributes money to the poorest without needing taxes.

It has to be balanced against keeping costs reasonable enough to be attractive for investment and having enough people to do the jobs we really need. In my opinion though EU expansion, mass immigration and the drive to get everyone into university created a perfect storm of having practically unlimited cheap labour driving wages down and negating the need for improving efficiency while diverting people into unproductive activities and costing a fortune.

I agree to a point about the tax burden but ultimately its all borne by individuals, whether directly or in higher prices. The bigger problem seems to be that it falls on too few individuals.

That seems counterintuitive to me. I agree that restricting the supply of unskilled labour will increase wages at the lower end, as well as increase investment in technology, but at a cost of reducing the size of the workforce and the associated tax take.

I'm also not sure that the tax burden falls on too few individuals, and more that it's heavily skewed against the wrong ones.

Nor do I think an increase in corporation taxes has to automatically be offset by higher prices. That's simply a consequence of a growth driven economic system, that demands ever increasing profits. So yes, I agree that in principle those profits are just a form of taxation by another name, which could equally be addresed by exploring alternative economic models.