Oh it's Question Time alright!

Yes indeed, first post, why not go for the big fish. Question Time. From the 8th December 2011. I'd link to it, but it'll be gone soon, and I'll bet you two haddock that this post will remain relevant for as long as the internet continues to work. In this episode a lot of things got discussed that I could potentially talk about, but I'm going to go for the biggy: unemployment, with a side order of benefits.

Well apparently, 55% of the British public, the stingy buggers, think that the benefits system in this country is too generous. This then puts people off going to work. Now this is a very complex double-whammy of value-judgements and economics that *should* be going into this decision, and I suspect that in both cases most people, say, around 55% have it wrong.

First off, assessing how generous our benefits system ought to be should really have very little to do with economics and a large amount to do with basic human dignity. Do we give people who are unemployed sufficient cash to feed, clothe and house themselves? And, perhaps, to lead a decent, reasonably fulfilled but probably far from perfect life. To ask any other question is to declare yourself either a poor economist or an exceptional cock-end, or possibly both, because the one thing that politicians, the media and most of the public engaged in debates about unemployment and benefits never ever mention is something that is a commonplace to ALL theories of free market, competitive capitalism, the system upon which our economy is based. And I'm happier believing that they're all exceptional cock-ends than that they're all poor economists. Even if (Probably libellous statement about George Osborne censored here)

That thing is structural unemployment, and it comes in two forms. One, which probably accounts for a very small percentage of unemployment, is in fact necessary to the market economy. This is because markets rely on the idea of flexibility. If people suddenly want more model aeroplanes, then you need a pool of unemployed people from which to recruit more model aeroplane-builders. You can't just take them from the company that loses out when people stop buying dolls to buy model aeroplanes, because unemployment has a lag, and companies don't just fire people on a whim, and the type of people who make dolls for a living may well be different to the type who make model aeroplanes. Obviously this is a vastly simplified model of the economy as a whole. We don't just make dolls and model aeroplanes, we in fact make the square root of fuck all because the Chinese will do it for less. But still, it's an example. And it shows that some unemployment is actually necessary to the functioning of the economy and thus those unemployed by this mechanism should be treated like useful members of society too and not dirty little scroungers as they so often are.

The second form of structural unemployment, however, is vastly more important, and more ignored, than that first, and in my opinion is probably accounts for the majority of unemployment in the UK today. You might also call it "industrial unemployment", and it goes something like this: even as we want more and more stuff, and more and more people are added to the global population, the amount of work needed to make a certain amount of stuff is decreasing, the structure of the economy changes. While total demand for goods is rising, demand for labour is actually falling as a result largely of mechanisation, automation and computerisation. If you want an example, think of your local supermarket. It probably put dozens of shopowners out of business when it first arrived. But that was ok, because it gave us cheap stuff and the shopowner could always get a job stacking shelves, cleaning the floors or announcing the Deal of the Day on Co-Tesburisson's Radio. Or on the tills. But now, the self-checkout has arrived, and its efficiency is undeniable. You can fit two or three into the space of one regular till, customers don't end up waiting half an hour for the trainee to work out what the code for "potato" is and supermarkets can sack 90% of their checkout staff and employ the remaining two or three to staff the self-checkouts. Hooray! Innovation in action! Costs lowered for all! Trebles all round!

Except, of course, for all the workers who've been laid off. They're thrown onto benefits, and demonised as scroungers for not having a job, largely due to the wonders of technological progress. The pattern is visible everywhere, from automated call-centre computers to the rise and rise of internet shopping, automatic ticket machines and even computerised trains. People are vaguely aware of this phenomenon, "There aren't the jobs" was the refrain on QT, but nobody perceives its root cause. The answer is always to "get the economy going" to "create jobs", although the argument of the government seems to go "cut spending and jobs in public services==>?????MAGICFAIRIES?????==>Jobs+growth" and Labour aren't much better. Job creation is definitely the answer, but I'll bet you some more miscellaneous sealife that when politicians say "job creation" they don't mean what I'm saying.

Before I say it though, I have to admit that I was worried that I might be redundant, as a result of some old gaffer on Question Time who, hero that he appeared to be, stuck his hand in the air and said, "Do you not think that the problem might be that wages are too low, not that benefits are too high?" This got a hearty cheer, largely because it's the right approach to this. If you have your priorities right, you want everyone to have the basics, then you start looking at how to incentivise work, to which the answer is clearly "Make sure you get more money for working than you do on benefits". So far so good. But in a situation where demand for labour is shrinking, real wages, particularly for semi- and unskilled jobs, are only going to go down, as more people compete for the same or less work. On the other hand, skilled workers will become ever more protective of their labour, and demand more and more of new entrants, as can be seen in the rise of the unpaid internship, and absurd working hours and demands for new professionals. Sadly, the gentleman in question didn't go on to expound a theory of labour regulation, like I'm about to, but instead said that he thought benefits were too high and he couldn't pay high enough wages to attract people. Shame.

But anyway, that's the situation. Not enough jobs to go around, and a society in which being without work is demonised. And also one in which there are huge inequalities in income. So the solution is this: Cap wages, but also cap hours. Break up high paying jobs into two or three or four moderately well-paid jobs. Now I don't pretend that this is any kind of panacea, and nor do I pretend that everyone will like it, but I believe that it is a better option for more people that the system that we currently have, and will only get more so as technology progresses and people find new ways to cut down on the amount of labour needed to make stuff for the increasingly small number of people with any money to buy it with.

The point of life, after all, is not to work but to enjoy, something that very few people manage simultaneously. It is my most humble opinion that nobody needs (at current prices) more than £50,000 p.a. to enjoy themselves to the hilt, and even if more money does mean more enjoyment, it's not worth the misery that it causes someone else. Moreover, studies have shown that greater efficiency at work is not linked to higher pay but to greater job satisfaction (once they don't need to worry constantly about money), and that giving people better working conditions leads to greater productivity, even where they have less money. So take the jobs that currently stress out the man on £200,000 p.a., split them four ways and give them to four people. Realise the Utopia of people working just six hours a day, with greater employment. Prevent the great accumulation of useless capital and unspent wealth and allow the whole population to participate in the economy. Create jobs in a meaningful way.

As I said, this is no panacea. Various highly-paid and highly-strung individuals will get on their high horses about how hard they have worked for their money (unlike those on the minimum wage, who never work hard, or those on benefits, who are deprived of even the chance to work hard). They may even up sticks and leave the country. To them I say, fine. We're better off without you. People who value their own luxuries more than the basic welfare of others don't deserve an opinion. The greater problem is the lie that everyone is fed from birth that people deserve what they own simply by virtue of owning it. That taking away someone's property and limiting income in order to make the whole world better is a bad thing. This means that not only the rich and greedy but also a great many who are neither would oppose a policy that involved limits to wages which they will never reach but which they are told they can aspire to and, if only they work hard enough, attain. But that's a different topic entirely.

As I also said, though, this is a blog about what people never say. And probably never will. Not sure why I'm bothering to be honest. The debate on QT swung back and forth between "Benefits BAD culture of entitlement GRR" and "But it's only £67.50/week, how can that be too much?" without anyone, even with elderly prompting, thinking that perhaps the answer might lie at the other end, in wages and the amount of available work. But there it is, it's the sound of a deafening silence about what could be the most profound economic problem the world has ever faced: what do we do when the work runs out? And it makes almost everyone's life infinitely worse.

EDIT: Guess I was right. Note the date.

WHY?

Warning. May contain something scarily like a mission statement. Yikes.

I've always been something of a cynic when it comes to blogs. "Why do you think that anyone cares what you have to say?" is a question I frequently find myself asking when confronted with innumerable barely-literate brainfarts about celebrities, documentations of some randomer's life or, heaven forbid, tumblrs (shudder). Unlike twitter, though, which is pretty uniformly crap (very few people can say anything worth saying in 140 characters) some blogs are genuinely interesting, or at least not entirely pointless. I have friends who blog about food and fashion. I find that dull. But largely because I find fashion, to quote a famous John, "irrepressibly drab and awful", and whilst I find food all too interesting, I want to eat it, not read about it.

Then there's the blogs I do read. Avidly. My first blog-love was the wonderful Speak You're Branes, which is all about taking the piss out of the clinically stupid and incurably right-wing comment-spewers of the BBC's Have Your Say, and is now sadly a limping shadow of its former comedic self. This, though, led me on to angryyoungalex, whose close analysis of everything from why sick jokes are (or aren't) funny through to why the French ban on the veil is essentially the same as making it mandatory to have your tits out is incomparable, funny, and incredibly convincing. Through that, I've discovered literally some other blogs that are worth reading for their insight and thought, which probably have a total readership of some other bloggers and various nutjobs and sadacts like me. Certainly in the hundreds rather than the thousands. So even they, then, good though they are, make me writing a blog ultimately pointless. Even if I could match their insight and wit, and anyone who knows me is introducing their face to their desk at the mere thought of my sense of humour, why bother, if nobody will read it. What's more, of those who do, I will be either preaching to the choir or talking to a brick wall. The internets doesn't change opinion, it reinforces it, as people find others who also hold their views and cling to them as evidence that they aren't just bog-standard, isolated fucknuts.

But, and mine is a big but (badum-tish) I've decided that I don't care for one pretty poor reason. This idea for a blog has been bouncing around in my head for a while now, and I've decided to let it out to have a run around. If I write about the things that aren't said that should be, the important aspects of a debate that are skimmed over or ignored and that guide our debates and thought processes down one very narrow track, then I'm not trying to change anyone's mind, but rather to open it, to make people aware of the possibilities that they're not looking at. Even if only twenty people ever read it, and they all think that everything that I've suggested is a gigantic steaming pile of walrus manure, at least they'll have thought about my ideas. Maybe?

Either than, or I'm just another futile scream in the packed, sweaty, overloud nightclub that is life, and anything I try to say will be drowned out by the din being made by the people who actually run the place.

Oh yeah, I can be pretty morbid and armchair-philosophical at times too, sorry.