Re: No More Arguments: Austerity is Working! : Thu Dec 19, 2013 7:58 am  

Lord Elpers wrote:

You conveniently are ignoring the three major outside factors that hit growth since 2010.

While others conveniently ignore the reasons for the whole balls up in the first place...

Re: No More Arguments: Austerity is Working! : Thu Dec 19, 2013 8:29 am  

BobbyD wrote:

Why should they?

Why shouldn't they?

That they do not disguises the depth of the issues, both individual, societal and economic.

Re: No More Arguments: Austerity is Working! : Thu Dec 19, 2013 8:54 am  

Him wrote:

I was questioning the made up facts from one of your right wing friends on here. But sadly he seems to have done a runner. Just like you will do soon. .

Not every one has the time to spend their life on forums. Some of us have to work.

Him wrote:

There is little good news in the economy so far. Of course growth is preferable to contraction but they're still relatively low figures and we have a huge amount of ground to make up. .

Well we disagree. Given the state of the world's economies what we are seeing in the UK is very good news. Nobody is doing cartwheels and I have stated there is much more still to do. But the evidence is clear Osbornes austerity plan is working and his critics have been proven to be wrong. You appear to be a sore loser!

Him wrote:

The unemployment figures have fallen. Yet there is plenty of evidence to suggest people have been forced to take very low hour/zero hour contract jobs when not suitable or forced off JSA altogether by jobcentre sanctions. The Unemployment figures don't take into account the underemployed. Also the employment figures include all unpaid family workers (up 9%) and all those on apprenticeships, work experience and government training & employment programmes. Not to mention the employment figures don't take into account population increases, whilst the unemployment rate does but doesn't factor in foreign, short stay workers. And the claimant count doesn't include those now on Universal Credit.
Median real wages have fallen since 2009 and continue to fall. Now at a level similar to a decade ago.
Redundancies have stayed roughly similar, but are still only at the level they were 2 years ago.
The number of underemployed workers has risen by 300,000 since 2010 and continues to rise with a large number simply classed as "unknown".
The long term unemployment rate has increased and continues to. .

Some of this maybe true but the overall number of new jobs has risen which should be welcomed given the very difficult hand this government were dealt. This increase in jobs is the complete opposite of what the left wing economist doom-mongers predicted.

Him wrote:

GDP per capita has fallen since 2010 and shows no sign of increasing. .

Really?

Him wrote:

This is, of course, all a national picture and we know some areas are particularly suffering. Which hasn't been helped by the abolition of the regional development agencies and a huge cut to government investment under the Coalition, down to negative net figures. .

So you think the many and serious problems left by Labour and the world economic meltdown could all be solved at a stroke eh?

Him wrote:

As for your (and George's) assertion that the post election economic dip was due to the Eurozone? That's just guff.
The UK dip started end of Q3/start of Q4 2010. As the graph you've used shows the Eurozone didn't go into recession until 2012. Plus during that period exports increased, they didn't take a hit. Both business and consumer confidence were both positive and increasing in the period prior to the election. As was consumer spending, retail sales, housing production, industrial production, capacity utilisation and manufacturing production. Whilst the number of unemployed, the youth unemployment rate, government bond yields, inflation and bankruptcies were falling.
It was the UK government not the Eurozone that so affected the UK economy.

Are you really saying the euozone crisis and recession had no serious impact on our economy?

Re: No More Arguments: Austerity is Working! : Thu Dec 19, 2013 9:00 am  

Mintball wrote:

Why shouldn't they?

That they do not disguises the depth of the issues, both individual, societal and economic.

Underemployed isn't unemployed.

Re: No More Arguments: Austerity is Working! : Thu Dec 19, 2013 9:12 am  

BobbyD wrote:

Underemployed isn't unemployed.

I didn't say that it was.

But we use unemployment as one measure of the economic health of the nation. Underemployment is the same – and it closely linked to the question of unemployment.

And one present question is what the downward movement on unemployment means. Because if people have largely gone into jobs that only, for example, give them an hour a week of work, with concomitantly low pay, then that is merely a disguise for a continuation of something that is almost the same as unemployment and costs society and taxpayer in the same way, and celebrating it is mere spin.

Re: No More Arguments: Austerity is Working! : Thu Dec 19, 2013 9:35 am  

Mintball wrote:

I didn't say that it was.

But we use unemployment as one measure of the economic health of the nation. Underemployment is the same – and it closely linked to the question of unemployment.

And one present question is what the downward movement on unemployment means. Because if people have largely gone into jobs that only, for example, give them an hour a week of work, with concomitantly low pay, then that is merely a disguise for a continuation of something that is almost the same as unemployment and costs society and taxpayer in the same way, and celebrating it is mere spin.

If it isn't unemployment then why count it as it is, let it have it's own measure, give it's own identity, make it feel important.

Who counts on the underemployed stats? Is it new starters? Part time workers? Full time workers? Do they want the extra hours to buy heat, clothes, an iPad, a holiday, dental work (sorry, just forked out £49)?

On the flip side, are there overemployed (made up word) people? How many want less hours?

Then there's the firms themselves, if they don't have the orders surely it's better to employ on the basis of what they can fulfill? I was at a customer last Thursday, the line runs on average 3 days per week, but things are picking up and that will increase probably towards the middle of next year based on how the sector operates. Vauxhalls at Ellesmere Port is another. You can bet the guys/girls at these places would class themselves as underemployed, but I will also bet they'd rather be that than unemployed.

Re: No More Arguments: Austerity is Working! : Thu Dec 19, 2013 9:53 am  

BobbyD wrote:

Then there's the firms themselves, if they don't have the orders surely it's better to employ on the basis of what they can fulfill? I was at a customer last Thursday, the line runs on average 3 days per week, but things are picking up and that will increase probably towards the middle of next year based on how the sector operates. Vauxhalls at Ellesmere Port is another. You can bet the guys/girls at these places would class themselves as underemployed, but I will also bet they'd rather be that than unemployed.

Nobody minds the classic four day week on reduced pay to get the company out of the mire approach, indeed this is why a redundancy procedure recommends that ALL employees are consulted because often that is the preferred method rather than having job losses.

The problem of under-employment at the moment isn't so much that "Its a bit slack so we'll drop one shift", its the growing tendency to advertise new posts as limited hours, 20 being a favourite, zero being the devil incarnate and then using employees on those contracts as spare capacity - its nice and flexible for the employer and seems like a good idea at the time but in reality it is no way to continue running an economy if you hope to be a financially strong economy.

For one thing, no-one on 20 hours a week can support themselves let alone a family, on £126 gross (NMW) per week - anyone who is only guaranteed those hours will struggle to find accommodation and will definitely be claiming housing benefit and working tax credits, in other words the public purse is paying people to work, worse still those employees will barely be paying any tax and their tax take will definitely be far greater than their contribution.

Its fine doing this in such austere times as we just have to get through, but its no master plan for the future and some recording of such numbers should be made (if not already), the ideal plan when the good times roll again should be to have everyone out of the range of tax credits and not by simply reducing the limits for when they become payable.

Re: No More Arguments: Austerity is Working! : Thu Dec 19, 2013 10:40 am  

BobbyD wrote:

UK GDP per capita



So when you say "fallen since 2010" you meant to type "risen, then dropped" otherwise you're simply a right winger who makes up facts or is it FACTS!!!

GDP per Capita when the Coalition came to power - 32809
Latest GDP per Capita - 32722

Thanks for proving the GDP per capita figures have fallen since 2010.

Re: No More Arguments: Austerity is Working! : Thu Dec 19, 2013 10:43 am  

BobbyD wrote:

graphs

Again, thanks for proving that the Coalition took over a growing economy and caused it to falter before any Eurozone issue occurred.

Re: No More Arguments: Austerity is Working! : Thu Dec 19, 2013 10:47 am  

BobbyD wrote:

Why should they?

Because underemployment is an important indicator of the strength of the economy. When the unemployment figures are released we get plenty of different stats on unemployment, employment, private & public sector employment, long term unemployment, youth unemployment, number of jobs, vacancies, and the claimant count but no figures on underemployment despite them being part of the same method of data collection.

The straight unemployment figure is a little like the straight GDP figures. It's good they're heading in the right direction but they are one indicator. To just take that one indicator, whilst ignoring all others is misleading as to the strength of the economy.