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Politics, politics, politics

there is a reason why social science graduates are desired in a lot of roles, when I was working at Bloomberg some of the most desired graduates were English / politics / language grads. As long as you went to a good school in the majority of cases the subject matter is secondary it is used as a flag to employers regarding your potential. I studied Economics, I work in finance and I have used (at the most) the content I learned in University for 1% of my role. However the skills I picked up at University - critical thinking etc have been vital. Without a University degree you do not pick up these skills and you can not flag them to employers.

On a social side of things there is a direct link to higher education and crime/anitsocial ills (causation and correlation I know) - having a more educated population is a benefit in itself.

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/20...ely-that-you-will-commit-a-crime-as-an-adult/

Our University system is lacking and there is a need for a greater emphasis on vocational training, other countries do this better. As normal my argument begins and ends with look at a country that does what we want and copy it, and typically its the Nordics or Germany we should be taking our lead from.
 
ShipOfGoldblum said:
The "good school" bit is crucial, isn't it? The flag is for social capital.
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I use School and University interchangeably sorry for any confusion. There are doss Universities but they are definitely the minority and even them have some value.

As it is I went to one of the worse schools in Essex, then a mediocre College and a fairly decent University. The biggest benefit I got from Uni was broadening both my expectations and social sphere, much better to do this at 18.
 
ShipOfGoldblum said:
The first part of the idea is that everybody can take up to four years of funded higher education, once they have made enough qualifying tax contributions (or whatever the equivalent is for the unemployed - separate discussion, also relevant to qualifying for pensions, benefits etc).

At 28, you might decide to have kids. Or you might decide to cash in your higher education credits. You might well want to do both - after all, you'd have been working and saving for ten years by that point. You might wait until you were forty, or until you retired.

And this is mainly for theoretical work: arts and pure sciences.

The second part of the idea is to reexamine the link between education, training, research and qualification. We know that a well educated workforce is productive. In some cases, there's a link between education (in the sense of training) and productivity. Engineers, as you say, need to learn some fundamental principles before they are let loose on bridge design.

Quite why a sociology graduate is going to be better at software sales is unclear. For the software vendor, the degree evidences a few soft skills, and if the candidate didn't have a degree, he or she would be suspect - because nice, reasonably intelligent kids are meant to have degrees these days. The well-educated workforce may be productive, but quite often it's post hoc ergo propter hoc to argue for a causal link.

So. As you say, we clearly need doctors, chemists and so on. But medical training is already pretty much vocational; it's usually centred around a teaching hospital. It's essentially an NHS apprenticeship delivered in an academic/industry partnership. We don't notice, because the industry in this case is public sector. Why not do the same thing with pharma, civil engineering and so on? Let industry teach the basics, outsourcing some of the learning to academia if they want.

Under this model, a 30 year-old bridge designer would already have a couple of years of relevant, academically-delivered professional training under their belt. At this point, they might spend a couple of state-funded years doing a combination taught and research course in some wider aspect of civic design. Then perhaps, as a 55 year old, sick to the back teeth of bridges, but financially independent, they would spend another two years doing an intensive sociology degree.

A problem with this argument is that there's no incentive for civil engineering firms to train apprentices if there's a global supply of civil engineering graduates. So either this model applies globally, or we have quite a complex series of corporate tax breaks and incentives to make it work.

But it does seem to me that the current dynamic undervalues academic institutions by treating then as a vocational training providers or - worse - as finishing schools for upmarket service economies. My suggestion is just one of the ways in which we could do this better.
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If everyone is trained and nobody learns, you just create a society of tin soldiers.

It's important to have at least half of your population intellectually enlightened, developed as independent critical thinkers.

Libraries give us power...
 
Gutter Boy said:
If everyone is trained and nobody learns, you just create a society of tin soldiers.

It's important to have at least half of your population intellectually enlightened, developed as independent critical thinkers.

Libraries give us power...
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I agree. There should be more innovation in education. Too much focus on teaching delviery, not enough learning.


"If you think Education is expensive, try ignornace."
 
Gutter Boy said:
If everyone is trained and nobody learns, you just create a society of tin soldiers.

It's important to have at least half of your population intellectually enlightened, developed as independent critical thinkers.

Libraries give us power...
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Yes, that's what I'm saying. Separate training and learning; allow people to do the latter when it suits them best.
 
ShipOfGoldblum said:
Yes, that's what I'm saying. Separate training and learning; allow people to do the latter when it suits them best.
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I think learning should happen throughout life. But I also think that big block between the ages of 18-21 is essential, because that's when independent minds are really being shaped.

It also performs an important societal function in getting that half of the population out of their insular small towns and into culturally rich and dynamic centres.
 
Gutter Boy said:
I think learning should happen throughout life. But I also think that big block between the ages of 18-21 is essential, because that's when independent minds are really being shaped.
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Shaped by smoking copious amounts of weed and filling up on tax free larger?

In all seriousness I agree. What happened to all the Brexit Beef? We can’t let this love in last too long.


Sitting on my porcelain throne using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app
 
https://www.theguardian.com/busines...average-earnings-hit-39m-2017-high-pay-centre

Pay for chief executives at Britain’s biggest listed companies rose more than six times faster than wages in the wider workforce last year as the average boss’s pay packet hit £3.9m.


Chief executive pay at businesses on the FTSE 100 index surged 11% on a median basis in 2017 while average worker earnings failed to keep pace with inflation, rising just 1.7%, according to the High Pay Centre’s annual review of top pay.


A worker on a median salary of £23,474 would have to work 167 years to earn the median annual pay of a FTSE 100 boss – up from 153 years in 2016, the report showed. The gap between bosses and workers widened despite government efforts to hold companies accountable for runaway pay.

_________________

I wonder, if the minimum wage rose at the same rate as FTSE 100 CEO pay has over the period since the minimum wage was introduced, what the minimum wage would now be?

*edit -- according to an article from 2017, it would be £12.74 an hour (so, it'd be even higher than that now, given this is an old article).

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/what-minimum-wage-would-today-11776028

research by the GMB union and the High Pay Centre to mark 20 years since the minimum wage was approved under Labour.
 
Most businesses in the FTSE sell to global markets and benefited in the short term over fiscal 2016/17 from the massive fall in the pound. So FTSE chief executives would have done disproportionately well from incentive schemes tied to share prices.
 
the dza said:
I wonder, if the minimum wage rose at the same rate as FTSE 100 CEO pay has over the period since the minimum wage was introduced, what the minimum wage would now be?

*edit -- according to an article from 2017, it would be £12.74 an hour (so, it'd be even higher than that now, given this is an old article).

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/what-minimum-wage-would-today-11776028

research by the GMB union and the High Pay Centre to mark 20 years since the minimum wage was approved under Labour.
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Off the top of my head I'm pretty sure that the minimum wage itself has increased at quite a clip since it's introduction, certainly well ahead of average earnings if I recall correctly. I don't have any figures to hand but I think the real issue with lack of wage growth affects the lower-middle section of the overall range, more so than actual minimum wage earners.
 
Parklaner81 said:
Off the top of my head I'm pretty sure that the minimum wage itself has increased at quite a clip since it's introduction, certainly well ahead of average earnings if I recall correctly. I don't have any figures to hand but I think the real issue with lack of wage growth affects the lower-middle section of the overall range, more so than actual minimum wage earners.
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Gig economy and zero hours contracts have had a massive impact on incomes at the lower end of the range, though.
 
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Parklaner81 said:
Off the top of my head I'm pretty sure that the minimum wage itself has increased at quite a clip since it's introduction, certainly well ahead of average earnings if I recall correctly. I don't have any figures to hand but I think the real issue with lack of wage growth affects the lower-middle section of the overall range, more so than actual minimum wage earners.
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My point was the difference in the rate of increase between the top and the bottom, i.e. if the min had gone up at the same rate as CEO pay (since the time the min wage was introduced), then the min wage as of Dec 2017 would have been £12.74 per hour (according to the GMB study cited there). Even with the wage increases at the bottom in recent years, they lag way behind the rate of increase at the top (overall, since the introduction of the minimum wage).

You are quite right about the lower-middle section of wages earners too, no doubt. Really highlights where the money has been flowing, at an ever increasing rate it seems too.
 
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the dza said:
My point was the difference in the rate of increase between the top and the bottom, i.e. if the min had gone up at the same rate as CEO pay (since the time the min wage was introduced), then the min wage as of Dec 2017 would have been £12.74 per hour (according to the GMB study cited there). Even with the wage increases at the bottom in recent years, they lag way behind the rate of increase at the top (overall, since the introduction of the minimum wage).

You are quite right about the lower-middle section of wages earners too, no doubt. Really highlights where the money has been flowing, at an ever increasing rate it seems too.
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Yeah I get that, and agree. My only point was that if looking at growth rates, an even starker picture could have been painted by selecting a point of comparison other than the minimum wage.
 
Parklaner81 said:
Yeah I get that, and agree. My only point was that if looking at growth rates, an even starker picture could have been painted by selecting a point of comparison other than the minimum wage.
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Ah ok. I do think the highest earners v the lowest paints a good picture, but in the initial article I linked to (The Guardian one), they do compare the latest pay rises to that of the "average worker earnings" which rose just 1.7% over the past year. Not sure where to look to do the comparison over the period of time since the min wage was introduced though (only did a quick search, but couldn't find that).
 
the dza said:
Ah ok. I do think the highest earners v the lowest paints a good picture, but in the initial article I linked to (The Guardian one), they do compare the latest pay rises to that of the "average worker earnings" which rose just 1.7% over the past year. Not sure where to look to do the comparison over the period of time since the min wage was introduced though (only did a quick search, but couldn't find that).
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I don't think this is exactly what you're looking for, but as a back of a fag packet, rough & ready calculation to illustrate my original point;

The NMW was £3.60 when introduced in 1999 (I think!). It's well more than double that today, so it's increased by over 100% (edit: this, of course, should say ONE hundred percent!).

Average weekly earnings, from a quick glance at the ONS website increased by approximately 62% from 2000-2017 (so not an identical timescale - the NMW one is slightly longer - but very similar). Of course, this is comparing an hourly rate with a weekly wage, so it's not exactly like for like, but I'm just illustrating a general point, which is that there seems to be a significant difference.

You can find good historical average earnings data on ONS - it would be interesting to compare that to the CEO pay.
 
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Parklaner81 said:
I don't think this is exactly what you're looking for, but as a back of a fag packet, rough & ready calculation to illustrate my original point;

The NMW was £3.60 when introduced in 1999 (I think!). It's well more than double that today, so it's increased by over 400% (edit: this, of course, should say ONE hundred percent!).

Average weekly earnings, from a quick glance at the ONS website increased by approximately 62% from 2000-2017 (so not an identical timescale - the NMW one is slightly longer - but very similar). Of course, this is comparing an hourly rate with a weekly wage, so it's not exactly like for like, but I'm just illustrating a general point, which is that there seems to be a significant difference.

You can find good historical average earnings data on ONS - it would be interesting to compare that to the CEO pay.
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What happens if you type 400% ?

Companies use internships, apprentices, young people to pay less I think.
 
SpurMeUp said:
What happens if you type 400% ?

Companies use internships, apprentices, young people to pay less I think.
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They may well, but I think even this has been tightened up a fair bit compared to what it used to be. My memory tells me that there used to be far more exclusions/loopholes back in the early days of the NMW than there are today, but I could be wrong.
 
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