Not really. In fact we have way more in common with Germany than most other European countries.

Apart from management philosophy & practice.

Oh and levels of union membership

After you have gone to great lengths talking about political theory (not limiting your arguments to the UK) and how things you disagree with CANNOT work and how socialism has been proven NOT to work in other countries (other countries with other cultures, I might point out), I then point at one of the countries where social democracy does work and, in that instance, has provided the strongest economy in continental Europe ... and the best you can come up with is that it's a different culture?
Sorry Sal, but if you are going to use other countries as examples to try to show how the extreme version of something won't work, you cannot then dismiss those employing the more moderate version where it does.

I was speaking to a former colleague on Saturday night who informed me that one leading contract research organisation, that performs scientific studies for all the major pharmaceutical companies, is now employing PhD qualified Chemists on zero hour contracts. These people will not be on good money either when they do work. The job market for Chemistry graduates has got worse since I finished University in the early 90s. Graduate salaries for Chemists have not risen massively despite the alleged demand for scientists. I have seen positions advertised for graduate Chemists with salaries that are barely higher than the minimum wage.

My main reason for staying on to do a PhD was the lack of jobs at the time. At least I wasn't burdened with a massive debt after six years of study. Successive governments have encouraged young people to obtain a University Education in order to obtain a career with good prospects. In actual fact all that many have to look forward to is a massive debt hanging over them while they slave away in a low paid job where their qualifications have very little worth or relevance.

There is a simple way to circumvent zero hours contracts: introduce an aggregated annual hours contract. That should cover the vast majority of all "real" jobs and take account of any seasonal demands. Employers would have the flexibility of labour and employees would have the safety-net of knowing what they'd be earning each week/month.

It would of course require managing, maybe that's where the UK and US fall short?

Quote: cod'ead "It does seem rather strange that the most productive period most of the western world enjoyed was during the 1960s, when labour was highy regulated and unionised and income taxes were high. Kinda gives a lie to the oft trotted out mantra that success only follows deregulated labour markets and lower taxes'" This is a fine example of mistaking a symptom with a cause. After WWII there was the baby boom, and the social, cultural and technological trends that came on the back of the industrialisation and reconstruction legacies of the war. That unions and other sectional interests that drove regulation were able to capture power on the back of those conditions is an entirely different matter to actually creating them. And those conditions couldn't last forever as the stagflation era of 1970s showed. And whilst the West enjoyed the post-WWII boom the "developing" world was relatively rather less developed and lacked the same conditions for growth, so when those countries adopted their own statist policies like high regulation barriers, protectionism and import substitution industrialisation the result was a short lived burst of very high growth rates (from a very low absolute base) followed by long periods of stagnation until they started to liberalise and catch-up. So it's not clear at all to me how greater statism in the UK would recreate the conditions of the post-WWII boom. And back on the subject of zero hours contracts, I find this piece provides a well rounded view from someone who knows what they are talking about: flipchartfairytales.wordpress.co ... be-banned/

Quote: cod'ead "It does seem rather strange that the most productive period most of the western world enjoyed was during the 1960s, when labour was highy regulated and unionised and income taxes were high. Kinda gives a lie to the oft trotted out mantra that success only follows deregulated labour markets and lower taxes'" This is a fine example of mistaking a symptom with a cause. After WWII there was the baby boom, and the social, cultural and technological trends that came on the back of the industrialisation and reconstruction legacies of the war. That unions and other sectional interests that drove regulation were able to capture power on the back of those conditions is an entirely different matter to actually creating them. And those conditions couldn't last forever as the stagflation era of 1970s showed. And whilst the West enjoyed the post-WWII boom the "developing" world was relatively rather less developed and lacked the same conditions for growth, so when those countries adopted their own statist policies like high regulation barriers, protectionism and import substitution industrialisation the result was a short lived burst of very high growth rates (from a very low absolute base) followed by long periods of stagnation until they started to liberalise and catch-up. So it's not clear at all to me how greater statism in the UK would recreate the conditions of the post-WWII boom. And back on the subject of zero hours contracts, I find this piece provides a well rounded view from someone who knows what they are talking about: flipchartfairytales.wordpress.co ... be-banned/

Germany is effectively no different to here the wealth is generated by private companies - it has a different relationship with unions than we do here. Essentially the people making the decisions around wealth generation are the directors of private sector companies i.e. Capitalism or have I got that wrong? are there great swathes of public sector manufacturing, mining, banking and service providers in Germany? Germany is a federal state of course it will have different nuances to here - the fact still remains that wealth generation doesn't originate with the state.

Show me a truly socialist state where the average standard of living even approaches here?

Agreed.


Slightly, yes.
Unions and employers work together.
Factories and companies are legally obliged to have works councils.
It's not simply "the management" telling "the workers" that it's my way or the highway.


Not that I know of.
We weren't talking about nationalisation, we were talking about a fairer society, your response was "Fairer society - more claptrap".


Yes it is, a federal state is a great system IMHO (the Allies imposed it on Germany after WWII as being a fair system ... but it's not for us, oh no).
But because we are not a federal state shouldn't be a barrier to us being a fairer state.


I didn't say it did. (I wouldn't say it should either).
I pointed at a country with the sort of benefits that you say won't work in a successful economy.
By the way, the state does have a procurement policy of buying from companies that are judged to be looking good for the national economy ... the TUC here in the UK recommended this and the tories were going to adopt it but I've heard no more about it since.


I don't know what your definition of "truly socialist" would be, although I suspect you might mean Marxist Communist, miles away from what I'm talking about.

Germany has built a fairer state on social democratic principles, resulting in all the benefits I listed in my earlier posts PLUS a strong economy.
As a social democrat myself, I see the best system as being one that utilises the market and capital but maintains restraint on the excesses of capitalism and ensures that the economy is for the benefit of the people rather than the other way round ... like Germany so far, in fact.

That's the main reason I didn't go to university. When I was at school 7 years ago and before that growing up towards the end of my tenure we had university rammed down our throats. Everyone had to go to uni. But all I saw was debt. I looked at myself and thought, you're not very academically gifted so all it's going to be is some average degree at an average university which has no direct route into a tangible career and will do little to further my situation in life when I leave. Sure there partying and getting drunk, but i could do that while earning a full time wage. If i had gone to Uni i would be in a similiar situation as I am now except with debt. In fact probably worse as i would have less emplyment experience and i'd be looking for a job at a time when the market was in a downward spiral. I think thousands of young people have been duped into going to uni.

It keeps them occupied for the next three (or longer) years, hopefully until things improve on the job's front.

Completely agree.

My experience is somewhat similar to yours in the sense that schools were only interested in pushing HE. I did go to university in the end, but was fortunate to fall into an industry that I happen to have made a very good career out of. Yes, for many, university is the best way forward but for many others, it very much the opposite. My brother, for example, was not academically minded but was still persuaded that a degree was the best option. He dropped out after a year.

There is no doubt in my mind that young people are being sold a lie that going to university is a golden ticket to a lifetime of riches. Schools are consistently pushing HE at young people, under the pretence that your earnings with A-levels and degrees will be so much more that you won't have to worry about the collossal debt that you're building up. It was a nonsense in 2003 when I went to uni and it's an even bigger nonsense today.

Those graduates come out of the system at the other end and guess what? There isn't enough graduate jobs to go around. So your typical grad, even with a good degree, is applying for £15k entry level roles - this wasn't in the university sales brochure (my mistake - they call them 'prospectuses') , was it?

Throw in to the mix the dwindling prospect of home ownership and starting a family, it's little wonder that young people are left feeling that they have been let down. Those who aren't academically minded are made to feel that they're inferior whilst the rest find that they have spent the best part of £20k, only to find that their degree counts for nothing against candidates with decades of experience when they apply for what they were led to believe was a "graduate" opening.

£13 to £15K jobs are pretty much the norm for a 21 year old graduate now and the "degree necessary" qualification is just a default tagline on the advert for many companies, many of whom do not actually need degree educated workers but stick it on there thinking that it will filter out a couple of hundred applicants if they do.

To give two examples my daughter #1 got a position in a large law firm with her law degree a couple of years ago but after she started she was told that the degree, its mark and the status of the uni she took it at were all irrelevant to them, they were only interested in her attitude, which was good as it shows that the company were genuinely interviewing candidates and not just going through the motions and then compiling a league table of degrees.

Her sister, daughter #2 has just got a job at the same company without a degree for exactly the same reason, she interviewed well (coached by her sister) and works hard, again showing that they know what they are looking for in an interview and seem to be pretty switched on about what personality they are looking and the view that they will teach you the rest - which is how it should be but too often is not.

They are both earning salaries that, like for like and with inflation taken into account, I would have dreamed of when I was their age.

Mind you, that isn't saying much

When I started work at 16 in 1975 my annual salary was less than their nett monthly pay, by the time I was 21 the company had added free use of a company van to my stipend and a few more quid and they thought that was over generous

When I left that company ten years later my wage was £140 a week and a company car (they always sold the company car as a big deal, it was a fekkin Ford Escort Pop), and I left to join my dads company where my pay packet was the enormous amount of £80 a week and a second hand Talbot Solara, topped up by whatever cash fiddles he had going that week