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

Be nice if they'd sort our pensions out as well seeing as how there was so much in the kitty not so long ago and now they are doing their best to avoid all knowledge, despite the loss being at least partly thanks to the government's big and clever ideas... These claims of the post office owing the government money etc I find quite amusing. The government own the PO, decide how it's run and under what boundaries. It's like screaming at a crying child to stop crying!

Robyn - I don't see the dichotomy.

Every public sector job is an overhead, as are welfare payments. Some overheads are essential, some aren't.

If we take the national average wage as £24k and the given example of £6600 as the income of someone on benefits.

The income tax paid from the £24k is about £4000 so, using every penny of income tax to pay benefits, it takes one and a half people to pay for one person on the dole. But that's nowhere near a real world example as income tax pays for lots of other things. Welfare accounts for 16% of the budget so let's say 16% of income tax goes on welfare. Now we see that it takes more than ten people to pay for one person on the dole.

But, it takes nearly thirty eight people to pay for one average public sector job.

Keeping people in unnecessary public sector jobs is a *very* expensive overhead

I dont really understand what public sector jobs have to do with anything? I'm pretty sure there's very few jobs that are actually unnecessary in the public sector, in the real world. Maybe a few, but not a huge percentage. The rest are being paid to provide a service so it's hardly money being spent on nothing. Which is what benefits are. One is worth paying, the other is a waste of money (in these terms. You know I support benefits overall. I see no reason to increase the number of people on them artificially though).

Our industries have broken down and we are in a recession. Everything looks bad. I'm still pretty sure that cutting things down doesn't really help. People in employment spend money, people on benefits cannot (they cant spend what they aren't getting!). The better the employment, the better the tax income from them. I understand it's a tricky hole to get out of but cutting everything back means putting people out of jobs. Which means you're spending maybe less money in the short term on nothing, nada nad damaging long term prospects for a lot of people who *could* be paying taxes INTO the govt's coffers and helping us get out of this.

How much do benefits cost, if you assume that at least, say, 2/3 will be on housing and council tax benefits as well, and take into account, according to the average wage, how much tax you LOSE by them being out of work? That's income tax, national insurance, VAT on luxuries. You know, eating out, going out, stimulating the economy?

>>nada, and damaging <<

I have really bad lillitis at the moment, I'm so sorry.

We're talking about cuts/taxes and the main effect of cuts is losses of jobs in the public sector.

We *have* to make short term cuts because the deficit is so huge. If we had a balanced budget and were simply talking about the merits of a small state v a large state, that would be one thing. An interesting discussion. However we're talking about debts of a colossal nature. Our debt is £4.8 TRILLION and increasing by £178bn a year (from the CH4 prog).

<>

Labour created 600,000 public sector jobs. Yes, many were nurses, teachers, police etc ... but not 600,000.

Two examples - my mother worked out of a small psychiatric hospital in Fife. It had 6 small wards and about 50 beds. There were also offices for the staff etc. In 2000, the hospital was renovated. It now has 2 small wards, 16 beds and over a dozen offices to cope with an influx of admin staff. (The District Nurses were kicked out due to a lack of space). The patients that used to get 24/7 care are now looked after by the District Nurses in their own homes. With the best will in the world, they can't be there 24/7 and the standard of care has fallen.

I used to work out of a community education building in Dundee - an old school. When I worked there, there were two offices, a cafe, a theatre and every classroom had activities going on - about a dozen classrooms plus a couple of portakabins. I went back to visit a couple of years ago to find most of the classrooms were now offices, only 3 workspaces remained plus the theatre. Whereas once the place hummed with the public coming and going to dance classes, pottery, T'Ai Chi, art classes, music workshops, community drama ... now there was a security gate and an appointment system. Very few classes at all.

I don't think those examples are atypical to be honest and I'm sure that every single one of these new people can make a very convincing case why *their* job is essential, but the fact is we got along just fine before most of these jobs were created. Yes, investment was needed to reverse years of neglect but ... 600,000???

that ch4 prog showed a public sector of 7 million workers

2 million of whom were "front line" providers, the numbers also took in those in front line proffesions working in the private sector, nurses, teachers, police, fire fighters, prison officers, etc.

thats 3.5 backroom staff supporting every front line worker?????

I think we'd need to know what the 600,000 figure includes and what it doesn't. For example, is it headcount, or FTE? Does it include the nationalised banks? Does it include university staff (which, I found out recently, are classified as state sector not public sector)? Does it include nationally-owned or part-owned companies such as Royal Mail, BBC, C4 etc? Does it include GPs, who I think are still technically self-employed because of a compromise/fudge when the NHS was founded?

I think Child Benefit should be scrapped entirely. If people choose to have children they should be in a position to fund it themselves. It's a lifestyle choice. I choose to drive, and I don't expect a handout from the government to fund it.

Otto - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/labour-has-created-600000-public-sector-jobs-since-1998-528153.html

Monkey > "I think Child Benefit should be scrapped entirely. If people choose to have children they should be in a position to fund it themselves. It's a lifestyle choice. I choose to drive, and I don't expect a handout from the government to fund it."

Hmmm the children don't choose to be born though. Child Benefit is for thjem rather than the parents.

FB

Then they should be given vouchers to be spent on things for the child, rather than a cash payment. How much of the child benefit is spent on the child? I would imagine not much at all. Probably goes on cigarettes or alcohol in most cases.

Children don't ask to be born, I agree with you there. But it takes two adults (in the majority of cases) to create a child. There are plenty of birth control methods available. If they aren't in a financial position to care for a child then they shouldn't expect the government to help them out.

Hm, I have to disagree that support staff are unnecessary. One social worker will need plenty of support considering they have to do wore work than should be asked of anyone in a highly emotional and difficult environment.

I dont like the imbalance, but that's just mismanagment from above. The first people to get hit are always the front liners.

How much paperwork (necessary paperwork) do you think is produced in the course of a child abuse case? How many child abuse cases are taken on by each person? How much paperwork and processing is involved in gathering evidence to catch sex pests?

Processing rape cases?

Sorting out family problems within hospitals (did you know that abuse of the elderly and disabled by their own families is just horrificly high? That has to be dealt with).

the more you try to protect people, the more you have to process and create paperwork because that's how we arrange ourselves. Paperwork is, of course, a catch-all term for documents, hard copy or on computer.

Sorry. I wouldn't want to be the one to decide which person's work isn't necessary. You can if you like but I cant see it achieving anything except taking skills and knowledge out of areas that need all the help they can get.

As for child benefit, again, why are we fighting over scraps? Children need to be supported, poverty almost always affects children more than any other member of society. Those children quickly become teenagers. Then adults. It's too late to change them, really, once they are teenagers. Not too late to try, but you've missed the easy part. I dont think we can assume that even a large minority just spends their child benefit on fags and booze. Most people want to be good parents despite the odds being stacked against them. It's a seriously complex issue and I dont think we should have it again here, there's a whole thread already running on the subject.

If we have to cut instead of taxing, cut the tops off the trees, not the roots and bark. Pollard the buggers so the trunk and roots can do their job of supporting the branches and leaves that will grow back nicely next year...

"We *have* to make short term cuts because the deficit is so huge. If we had a balanced budget and were simply talking about the merits of a small state v a large state, that would be one thing. An interesting discussion. However we're talking about debts of a colossal nature. Our debt is £4.8 TRILLION and increasing by £178bn a year (from the CH4 prog)."

Not necessarily. As a comparatively prosperous first-world nation with plenty of resources, just piling on more debt is a viable option. It has disadvantages of course, hiking up the repayments in future years and colouring the perception (and thus treatment) of Britain in international money markets, but potentially that's a cost worth paying.
If (hypothetically) we were to hike up spending this year by £20 billion, but it helped to get us out of the recession so the government took in more tax, the defectit could easily go down to £60 billion - a net saving of £138 billion. This is quite possible, on the scales we're talking about. Isn't this preferable to cutting £138 billion-worth of public sector spending and investment, and having the same again to do next year?

The method of counting 'frontline' staff on that program was deeply suspect IMO. I don't think they included social workers, for example.

How can you simply ignore social workers?

I think they missed out all sorts of 'frontline' services that they, in their positions of privelige, simply don't personally need and therefore don't notice.

SWL - thanks for the link. I've found one too that's a bit more informative about what is and what isn't included:

http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/how-many-public-sector-jobs-did-labour-create/2860

It looks (from the Indie article) as if 80% of the growth in jobs has been in health and education. Whether we can do without them or not I'm not sure - I guess it depends what kind of services we want and are prepared to pay for. Did we "get along just fine" before? Yes and no... we could go back to the days of huge class sizes, crumbling infrastructure, one-book-between-two, and huge waiting lists. But I don't think that's a good idea in terms of the kind of society we want, nor in brute economic investment terms.

I'm not sure how useful the "front line" versus "support/back office" distinction really is. Take away so-called support staff, and then at best the front line works much less efficiently (deprive a consultant of her appointments secretary and watch how much more of her time is wasted) or just collapses completely.

Public services need more than just front line and back office support. They also need intelligence/data/information gathering, they need research, they need planning, they need management and leadership and strategic direction. Let's think about the police as an example. They have "front line" officers and "support staff" who help with paperwork, ordering supplies, HR/finance/payroll etc etc etc. But the police also needs information and analysis - what are the crime tends on their patch? Are their resources concentrated in the right areas? How do they compare with other forces - what might they teach others and what might they learn from them? What do local people think of the police, and how might relations be improved? How might the police work with schools/hospitals/licensing authorities etc for mutual benefit? Could they train and develop their staff better? And so on and so on. All these things are vital. I've never worked in the police service, and I'm sure there's lots that I've missed.

For those who are more used to the private sector, consider an analogy with a private company that sells a service. Yes, you need your sales team, your need those who deliver that service. But if all you do is sell a service and then deliver it, with no thought for what strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities await, then you're unlikely to last long.

To use a military analogy. Yes, you need your 'front line'. Yes, you need your logistics corps - or you have no front line. But if you don't know what your front line is doing or why, what the enemy is doing, what the terrain is like, what the weather will be like, whether your front line's tactics and equipment are optimal or not... then you'll lose the war.

I agree with you Otto - but what happens when the public sector is larger than the private sector (53-47 accord to that prog)?

All of the state has to be paid out of taxes taken from the private sector. A s the figures show, the private sector has been unable to support the state for some time now, hence the govt having to borrow every year.

When the public sector has grown to the point that it cannot be paid for, it has to be cut back. Where those cuts take place is moot.

The programme is looking increasingly suspect. I don't think I'd completely trust any of the figures it presents any more.

I have no problem with paying taxes for services. Does anyone? I'd rather pay higher taxes for better services than lower taxes and have services given only to those who can afford to pay private service providers for the private services. Dental, medical, rubbish collection, child protection, policing...