Roger Hicks Registered User

Roger Hicks is offline Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Aquitaine Posts: 23,939

Quote: jordanstarr Originally Posted by . . . Seems more like a make-work project in a shaky economy than actually addressing the issue. . . . polite way of putting it. The rest of your post -- which is effectively about sustaining an unsustainable economic model -- is much more to the point.



Until recently -- 50 years ago, say -- economics was predicated on scarcity. But in rich countries, where superabundance is taken for granted, there is no longer genuine scarcity. In a rich country, even the poorest of the poor are unlikely to starve, and the "everyday" poor -- the bottom 10%, say -- will still often have a car, a television, etc. In most rich countries they need not fear illness either; or at least, not ruination and dying in the gutter as a consequence of illness.



Right now, in the UK, Call-me-Dave and his Tory chums are trying to re-create the results of scarcity -- "In the sweat of they face shalt thou eat bread", Genesis 3:19 -- without actually having the scarcity to back it up, despite the best efforts of Osborne (the Chancellor of the Exchequer). The reason so many under-25s aren't working is because there aren't enough jobs. Forcing them to undertake meaningless "education" with worthless degrees, or treating them as slave labour to pick up litter, is missing the point.



The point, simply, is that money AND WORK needs to be more evenly distributed. Rich kids can afford to work for nothing (unpaid internships), because Daddy supports them, but in a decent society they'd be paid a fair wage for a fair day's work, rather than being exploited in their 20s so they can in their get overpaid jobs in their 30s and exploit others. And, of course, in a decent society, they'd get that internship (or whatever) out of a mixture of talent and burning enthusiasm, rather than being processed through the sausage machine, essentially on the basis of their social class or parental wealth.



I actually saw this starting at first hand nearly 40 years ago when I worked as an assistant in a London advertising studio. In the earky 1970s, assistants were paid (just) enough to live on, but over the 3 years or so that I intermittently worked as an assistant, wages didn't go up at all. Photography was a glamorous and sought-after trade, and too many rich kids (including me, though it's hard for me to think of myself that way) could rely too much on their parents -- so the market FORCED them/us to rely on their/our parents.



An even sillier example is journalism. In 1977, when I considered joining the NUJ (National Union of Journalists), a chapel (branch) consisted mostly of people who'd come up the hard way, joining a local paper as a cub reporter or even messenger boy on leaving school. There was always a more or less louche contingent as well, but they were rare.



Then people like me -- graduates, in my case with a law degree -- started coming in, and now, God help us all, journalism is regarded as a "profession". Oh, come on...



Cheers,



R. That's theway of putting it. The rest of your post -- which is effectively about sustaining an unsustainable economic model -- is much more to the point.Until recently -- 50 years ago, say -- economics was predicated on scarcity. But in rich countries, where superabundance is taken for granted, there is no longer genuine scarcity. In a rich country, even the poorest of the poor are unlikely to starve, and the "everyday" poor -- the bottom 10%, say -- will still often have a car, a television, etc. In most rich countries they need not fear illness either; or at least, not ruination and dying in the gutter as a consequence of illness.Right now, in the UK, Call-me-Dave and his Tory chums are trying to re-create the results of scarcity -- "In the sweat of they face shalt thou eat bread", Genesis 3:19 -- without actually having the scarcity to back it up, despite the best efforts of Osborne (the Chancellor of the Exchequer). The reason so many under-25s aren't working is because there aren't enough jobs. Forcing them to undertake meaningless "education" with worthless degrees, or treating them as slave labour to pick up litter, is missing the point.The point, simply, is that money AND WORK needs to be more evenly distributed. Rich kids can afford to work for nothing (unpaid internships), because Daddy supports them, but in a decent society they'd be paid a fair wage for a fair day's work, rather than being exploited in their 20s so they can in their get overpaid jobs in their 30s and exploit others. And, of course, in a decent society, they'd get that internship (or whatever) out of a mixture of talent and burning enthusiasm, rather than being processed through the sausage machine, essentially on the basis of their social class or parental wealth.I actually saw this starting at first hand nearly 40 years ago when I worked as an assistant in a London advertising studio. In the earky 1970s, assistants were paid (just) enough to live on, but over the 3 years or so that I intermittently worked as an assistant, wages didn't go up at all. Photography was a glamorous and sought-after trade, and too many rich kids (including me, though it's hard for me to think of myself that way) could rely too much on their parents -- so the market FORCED them/us to rely on their/our parents.An even sillier example is journalism. In 1977, when I considered joining the NUJ (National Union of Journalists), a chapel (branch) consisted mostly of people who'd come up the hard way, joining a local paper as a cub reporter or even messenger boy on leaving school. There was always a more or less louche contingent as well, but they were rare.Then people like me -- graduates, in my case with a law degree -- started coming in, and now, God help us all, journalism is regarded as a "profession". Oh, come on...Cheers,R.

https://www.patreon.com/rogerandfrances

www.rogerandfrances.eu

www.rogerandfrances.com __________________