h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25775287

Leaving aside the moral arguments regarding execution...

Vets are quite able to put old and infirm animals down without them suffering (imagine the outcry if that happened ) without any problem whatsoever.

We can put someone under so they feel no pain when a surgeon cuts them open and starts rummaging around inside.

I imagine that people commit suicide every day in painless ways with overdoses of various pills.

So what's the problem with executions? A general anaesthetic; a dose of some kind of toxin - job done. That sounds very clear and simple to me so there must be some good reason why it's not being used. But for the life of me I can't think what it might be

I don't know, but it could be for the same reason they stopped using their previous "cocktail", the drug makers refuse to have their drugs used for executions.

A bullet in the head, or even the guillotine, both are fast and efficient... progress ain't all its cracked up to be...sure a bullet costs less than these drugs any way, a twenty gauge shotgun shell at point blank range would do the job no probs, or is it cleaning up the mess after that's the problem?

They like to give the proceedings the illusion of compassion. Blasting someone's head to shards kind of lacks that.

I really worry about the humans sometimes... Such a strange spiecies, even with all the harming other creatures they do, they still don't seem satisfied, and somhow find it necessary to injur, hurt, and kill their own species members... Such brutality, from a so-called intelligent species... They should have never left the trees...

Okay, here's another one.

This could easily turn into permanently rolling conversation with me putting the world to rights

In many of the developed countries there are millions of people who either can't make ends meet even though they're working 40 hours a week (and sometimes when working two jobs), or who can't find a job that gives them enough hours to make ends meet.

The reason is that a lot of businesses pay low, or perhaps poverty wages. They do that because for decades the mantra has been 'cheaper is better', and as businesses have become embroiled in an almighty race to the bottom in terms of prices, a second mantra, or rather a dogma has taken hold and is now seen as the norm - costs have to be cut regardless, payroll is inevitably the biggest cost therefore payroll has to be kept under control.

Now we are at the point where that is almost the only thing that matters to many businesses. Whatever they can do to cut staff costs they will do, so in a buyers market for jobs (the business being the buyer), they can dictate terms. Wages that don't go up, wages that actually go down (unheard of 40 years ago), zero hours contracts, pensions and other job benefits cut back, being dismissed on a whim for the slightest (or no) infringement, where infringement can simply mean not working hard enough or not being part of 'the team' or 'on message'.

All in the name of keeping prices down because that's all that matters. Well, not quite all - if you're a public company there'll also be a pack of ravenous shareholders staring over your shoulder at the balance sheet, and the directors will shit a brick if the pack doesn't like what they see.

So, in a nutshell, over the years prices have been rendered unreasonably and unrealistically low, a situation made possible by cutting the wages and benefits of workers to the point where many can longer make a living wage, and also, when they have the clout, by companies demanding ever lower prices from suppliers, which inevitably gets passed on in the form of lower wages for the suppliers' workers.

Since that all seems so obvious to me, even though I'm sure it's over-simplified, what am I missing?

Competition from overseas, whose exchange rates make them a cheaper workforce, or whose workforce has even less clout than the UK/US ones?

Most entities (people, workers, consumers, businesses)want the highest possible income and the lowest possible costs. Obviously. In a free market the ability to maximise this depends on the power you wield. Naturally. Currently a lot of power is held by consumers demanding the lowest prices. Inevitably.

The consumers could just as easily demand higher prices. Unlikely. When was the last time that happened?

I'm racking my brain for a new made up word I heard the other day, the jargon for moving manufacturing business back to the UK from China. Due to the costs of transport mostly, and also because people in the UK no longer have the expectation of receiving such high wages. So it makes sense to manufacture where the goods are used. I was only half listening...I can't even recall what the products were.

It all comes down to money in the end. Man's belief in it as the single most important reason for existing. I use 'man' here to include the female of the species as well.

Now I've made myself all gloomy.

I've heard "on-shoring" used to describe that, as opposed to off-shoring.

It's a strange thing prices, because in theory if the entire workforce is paid less, then they can't afford the products so the prices of the products have to come down to actually sell any. Except they rarely do.

What we tend to see is fewer units being sold at higher margins. Or, new units with a lower price and a lower margin selling more.
An example of this is fashion, the top designers sell fewer clothes than they used to, but they're still charging the same high costs but paying less for them, so they're still making their same profit. But added to this market are then places like Primark who also pay less, but sell for less. Because they sell for less, they reach a wider market, and while they make less per item, they sell more items.

It's the stack it high and sell it low theory. And it does work.

What companies aim for is the most profit overall rather than per item. Cutting salaries overall cuts out a hefty outgoing. Cutting costs of materials also cuts out a hefty outgoing. They then have to chose how to balance the incomes to get as much overall profit as they possibly can.

The on-shoring (which I'm going to call it now, even if it's not the right word) is an interesting thing. Off shoring has become more and more expensive in three ways. Firstly is the workers, they've been getting more and more savvy about how much money the companies are making, and have been demanding better rights. Plus, if the end company has a marketing conscience, it hits them hard when videos of worker's conditions make it to mainstream news. Secondly there's the transport costs, these are going up and up, and will continue to. As the cost of fuel rises, and the transport companies themselves try to make as much profit as they can, the further something has to travel, the more it'll cost. There's also time-to-market to be taken into consideration. Thirdly, there's the impression of over-sees products and services. When a company recently brought all their call centre staff back to the UK, their reputation went through the roof.
While the English of people in offshore call centres is very good, the understanding of the nuances of the language is poor. And that drives up frustration in an already disgruntled customer. This company (and I can't remember its name) found that their customer satisfaction increased beyond expectation purely by moving their call centres to Scotland. So, they had happier customers, and word of mouth meant they had more customers, so even though they were paying more for the call centre staff, they were making more profit.

yeah, on-shoring, or even 're-shoring' that was the term. It might even have been the raspberry pi. Where is that made now and where was if first produced? Is it now re-shored to South Wales?

Perhaps "we" need to move away from "cash is king" concept, and back to barter system a bit more, then "fat cats" wont keep getting fatter as most of them dont have skills to barter with other than cash, in many cases inherited.

Still puzzled as to why the 48 hour (ok meant to be 40) working week concept is still here in the western world, now that technology has all these labour saving devices that are meant to give us more time to relax. A cut in the working week would create a hell of a lot of jobs

I don't know if it is down to poorly paid jobs, or people with no financial sense. I learned to budget early (through poor financial sense initially), and have never had any problems living on my income, even when I've had periods of unemployment. But I live within my means.

My dad had a full time job, and two part time jobs, and my mum also had part time work, but money slips through my dad's fingers like water. He has money, so he spends it, then has no money for bills when they come, and gets into trouble, and has to get another job to clear the debt.

One of my brothers is always running out of money before payday, he gets paid, spends all his money, then has nothing for the end of the week, and has, to my disgust now he has his daughter living with him 'run out of electricity'. Another brother is carefully budgetting, and although he is also on low pay, he manages to get through, including a few 'luxuries'.

Another friend never, ever had any money despite her husband's full time job and her part time. Ever. But every year or two there was an even bigger telly in the living room, they'd go abroad for a fortnight every few years, there was always a big kids party on their birthdays, and a lot of money spent on presents. They both smoked and there was never a shortage of money for fags.

Maybe people are just living outside their means? That doesn't mean wages shouldn't go up, but it amazes me when people say 'I don't eat a couple of days a week so my children can' when I've never, ever been in that position, even when I've been on unemployment/lone parent benefit. What the hell are they spending money on?? Sorry glad to get that rant out of my system...

I think one thing that's not so obvious is the difference between corporate wealth and corporate profits. The ideal of maximizing profits has been behind most of the ills mentioned above. This wasn't always the case. It used to be that companies tried to maximize their wealth. By that I mean they tried to strengthen the company rather than just bleed it dry. I once saw an interesting graph and article that correlated high corporate taxes to corporate wealth. In times of higher taxes, companies would minimize their taxes by taking profits and putting them back into the companies. They would invest in capital and their infrastructure. They would train and increase the pay of their employees. But in this age of minimizing corporate taxes companies maximize profits by stripping all reinvestment and sending to stockholders. It use to be that the value of a company and its earnings were based on sales. Now it's more based almost entirely on the price of its stock and THAT is determined by the market and its perceived value which is at the whim of day traders. This is why companies like Twitter can be insanely profitable even though they have no sales or earnings.

It's insanity.

You're absolutely right Baron Grim.

Once it was a case that any profit over a small amount would go straight into strengthening the company. The long term goal was that the shares would pay higher dividends on a stronger company.
Now however it seems it's the share value that is what people focus on, being able to buy the shares cheap, and then make a lot of money selling them, rather than getting dividends over the years.

Catching up...

Pastey: "What companies aim for is the most profit overall rather than per item."
Actually, it's both, in a sort of "Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves" kind of way. I've worked for a company where it was my job to price the beers we sold, and there was a strict cost-of-goods-sold percentage that Must Be Adhered To, or else. After a while I was told not to stock the high-end beers any more because the COGS percentage wasn't good enough, even though the company made a pretty fat dollar amount off each pint/bottle. A very short-sighted practice, particularly since the average monthly COGS percentage of the bar was well within range because the cheapest beers make the highest percentage and even the whole thing out, and if you only ever have cheap to mid-range beer you're not going to get the kind of reputation I'd built up over three or four years as a quality craft beer venue. Lesson: Don't work for any company where the bean counters dictate company practice.

Lanza - I heard it called re-shoring in a radio piece earlier this week about jobs coming back to the US because the higher wages that people are now demanding in places like China has cancelled out the savings, once the cost of shipping is included.

BG, that's a very good point, leastways, up to a point. Strengthening the company with re-investment, rather than profit-taking, is by far the most solid way to run a business, but at the same time there are plenty of tales of businesses (and public services) floundering after years of under-investment in new plant and equipment, and eventually going under when the market shifts and they've sat on their laurels instead of keeping up. Generally speaking though you're right - the focus has shifted away from putting profits back into a business and towards making as much money as possible to pay directors and shareholders while shafting the workers.

Speaking of which, let me put forward the example of my dad. Spending opportunities could be a factor, in that there are far more of them now, and the goods we buy 'need' upgrading more often than before.

I've heard re-shoring for bringing jobs back.

Let me give you the example of my dad. He did the same job - and I do mean exactly the same job - for at least 25 years, working for one of the power companies when they were still nationalised. If your lights went out he was one of the people who came round to put them back on again (he met the Small Faces once when their leccy went out ). He never got a promotion, although I'm not sure he really wanted one, but over the years he got a cost-of-living pay rise every so often. His wages were enough to raise a family without my mum having to work, we were never short of anything, Christmases were good, he had a car at a time that many didn't, and we never went into debt except for the occasional modest hire purchase agreement.

By the time he retired in the early 1980s he was on what I thought at the time was a pretty good wage for a skilled, but manual, labourer, and his company pension was so good he actually paid income tax on it, something which brassed him off no end because he'd paid the maximum he was allowed to into the scheme all his working life thinking he'd be free of income tax after 65. In fact, the company pension had, literally, so much money - billions - that it hardly knew what to do with it. And don't forget this is a nationalised company we're talking about.

He was a shift worker. The crew got the monthly rota well in advance, not with only a few days notice like the weekly schedule I got at my last job, nor did they get sent home when things got quiet. A full time job meant 40 hours, not as few hours as the company can get away with paying its workers. He'd get a day, or two days off between switching from earlys to lates and vice versa, and once a month he got a long weekend - Friday to Monday. The nature of the job meant that he had to work bank holidays and Christmas Day if scheduled, but he'd get double time and a day off in lieu if that happened.

Each December they put on a party for the workers' younger kids, and sent the older ones to a pantomime. I saw my first ever Laurel and Hardy film at one of those parties; Arthur Askey at one of the pantomimes, and the Muscle Man at another. Yes, the one from Opportunity Knocks

In short, the company treated its workers like people, with dignity. Now that the power companies are privatised I'd be surprised if that's still the case.

Essential services, such as electricity, gas, water, waste collection and disposal, public transport, phones, mail etc should not be in private hands, end of. They're far too important to let profit, shareholders and market forces be a factor in how they're run.

Oh poo. That's what you get for cutting and pasting something you wrote three days ago and then saved, without previewing