fake Posted September 10, 2012 Share Posted September 10, 2012 Oh dear......... If we had kept everything that the wicked witch destroyed we would have now been the strongest economy in Europe. No we wouldn't as the subsidies to keep the lot going would have meant our demise. When those subsidies stopped the income tax rate fell which benefited all. There are two ways of looking at it, you either use taxation to subsidise unprofitable firms just to keep people in jobs, or you allow a free market economy to decide. I think the majority would be for the latter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AWOL Posted September 10, 2012 Share Posted September 10, 2012 We would have significantly more immigrates and a larger population, because it is they will will work for low pay and not the British. Low pay and poor working condition is the only way to compete with China. Lots of work that we lost to china and other countries is coming back home. They cannot compete with the skill level of our older engineers, they do not have a prayer. Some companies are even addressing the "skills gap" problems that Thatcher introduced. Hopefully it is not too late. Most of the older engineers are now fifty somethings and have limited time to pass on their hard earned skills. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AWOL Posted September 10, 2012 Share Posted September 10, 2012 No we wouldn't as the subsidies to keep the lot going would have meant our demise. When those subsidies stopped the income tax rate fell which benefited all. There are two ways of looking at it, you either use taxation to subsidise unprofitable firms just to keep people in jobs, or you allow a free market economy to decide. I think the majority would be for the latter. There are two ways of looking at it....we either prop up industry to keep people in work....or prop up banks and feed tory bankers massive bonuses! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obelix Posted September 10, 2012 Share Posted September 10, 2012 No. I am not. The bankers are Camerons friends; they purposely brought England to the edge of the precipice in order to get rid of the Labour government. All right thinking people know that the bankers are tories and caused the present problems totally. Your argument suffers from the fallacies of causation, of correllation and of outright fruitloopery. Please try again, bearing in mind these issues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AWOL Posted September 10, 2012 Share Posted September 10, 2012 Your argument suffers from the fallacies of causation, of correllation and of outright fruitloopery. Please try again, bearing in mind these issues. You may continue to follow your delusionary path all the way to the sanitorium if you wish. OR you could attempt to jar yourself back into reality. Your choice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obelix Posted September 10, 2012 Share Posted September 10, 2012 You may continue to follow your delusionary path all the way to the sanitorium if you wish. OR you could attempt to jar yourself back into reality. Your choice. I'll stay in reality thanks. I've no desire to follow you down the rabbit hole and go AWOL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AWOL Posted September 10, 2012 Share Posted September 10, 2012 I'll stay in reality thanks. I've no desire to follow you down the rabbit hole and go AWOL Watch "One flew over the cuckoos nest" again before you decide to follow that route. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I1L2T3 Posted September 10, 2012 Share Posted September 10, 2012 Services is the not same as financial services though, which is a commn misconception (not saying that you think so) but a lot of people seem to hear "services" and think 70% of the country is dependant on banking. It's not. More like about 9%. Manufacturing is nearly twice the size of financial services. Surely the services sector is large, but for a country that has little resources left that are easily useable, a tertiary or quarternery econmy is what we need anyway. The only resource we are lacking is skilled workers sadly and we need to keep on top of that. But I digress... Indeed I never said 70% of the economy is financial services though some people might think that I guess. Manufacturing is 12%. Finance is approx 9 or 10%. Manufacturing is not double the size of the finance sector. It would be good if it was, and the financial sector was proportionately smaller. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I1L2T3 Posted September 10, 2012 Share Posted September 10, 2012 But we are not alone, So how do we increase it and compete with countries that can and do pay their workers much less. It's a problem a lot of countries face like you say. First thing is what manufacturing we have is reasonably healthy (given the circumstances) and productive. There's just not enough of it. We need to avoid competing with low wage economies on mass volume products. They'll wipe the floor with us. Instead we need to focus on niche and higher value maunfacturing. This requires investment, R&D, infrastructure, better integration between the academic world and business, getting kids interested in science/maths at uni again, better business education at uni, attracting investment from overseas, a tax regime that awards innovators etc... The government is already doing some of this but it just needs to do it in a more serious joined-up way. It may cost money at first but if done right there should be long-term benefits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stan Tamudo Posted September 10, 2012 Share Posted September 10, 2012 I was replying to what Thatcher did in her time. I was replying to what I quoted in your post. The industries that survived are now in profit and the taxpayer no longer contributes in propping them up. So who's been propping up some of the banks over the last few years? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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