Are people becoming surplus to requirement?

[banjodeano 31]

the last time i was in a supermarket and i was tried to be coerced into using the self service till, i told the woman, give me some stock and i will fill the shelves up as well....everyone should resist, they would soon get rid of them

[kckc 10]

Today, I've been to the Sculpture Park and after parking in the country park car park, found the helpful lady selling tickets who was there last year has been replaced by automated ticket machines demanding £7.50 exactly as they don't give change. It was the same in the main car park; I had to find the info desk to get change.

 

Good post Despritdan. I find it hard to believe that customers would prefer a machine demanding the exact change, to a helpful lady who could offer some local knowledge, a smile and maybe a little humour. Personally, I'm getting increasingly fed up with machines replacing people and much prefer personal interaction. You end up having to seek out a human quite often anyway, due to machine malfunctions, or if you require anything that requires an explanation. The jobs they are replacing may not be the best, but plenty of people would like &/or need them in the current downturn.

[erebus 10]

Well for instance people on benefit and the pensioners for a start, are all surplus to requirements. Obviously the Nazi solution is unacceptable, so more subtle ways are needed to be created. Feeling useless, being unable to support oneself, especially in harsh winter conditions, can encourage misery to evolve into direct action. Suicide is a very positive action to a hopeless situation, where the quality no longer exists in life.

 

So get ready for hikes in prices of all services and necessities, such as food and energy. The one bedroom farce and other reductions in benefits might provide a rise in such cropping. This will only bear fruit after the coming winter’s economic inducement.

 

With money being made without the necessity of industry, through financial products and other scams, who need a large population anymore in the UK. To massage wages down the constant reference to foreigners willing to work for peanut shells, keeps wages for the workers down, which is the point.

 

It’s an old trick, surplus of labour, so work for less, or better still collude with the corporate sector to job share. Job sharing is the new stats trick. One can employ 4 people for the wages of just one individual. Maybe even more, if done some ways.

 

So getting employment figures down is all about reducing hours, and being on call, never knowing when one will be wanted to work, but officially being employed. One can work four different people a day for the wage of one, by reducing hours, and over a week 20 people can be employed in what might previously be the wage of one employee. So on a 40 hour week, just offer people 5 hours at most each, maybe over two days, and the employment stats will see a rise in employment and a fall in unemployment.

 

Clever innit, and it works, as the UK economy apparently surges ahead, except that all the figures are a lie, but with a compliant media, who rely on financial inducements, as in advertising, from corporate interests, who are screwing us all.

 

Them that have the money tend to call the tune! Fancy another dance???

[Staunton 18]

The multinationals can exploit workers and resources in unregulated regions across the Global South to produce goods, transport these goods in unregulated shipping lanes at very low cost (but very high levels of pollution), and route their administration through Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands to avoid tax.

 

The only problem that these multi-billion pound enterprises have is their need to find some low cost way to supply their end consumers in the West - hence the conditioning of the customer to do this themselves via automation devices.

 

So, the executives get ever richer whilst unemployment is set to rise again - but that doesn't matter because the tories have done a fantastic job of demonising people out of work - blaming the victims, and the multinationals are laughing all the way to the (offshore) bank.

 

Wake up!

[ANGELFIRE1 10]

Sadly they are.

 

Angel.

[Staunton 18]

ASDA

 

We don't pay taxes!

 

We don't pay wages!

 

But our executives are very handsomely rewarded!

 

And the Waltons (ever wondered what the 'Wal' in ASDA Wal-Mart stands for?) are one of the richest families in the world, with their own private airport and nuclear shelter.

 

Wake up!

 

Every time you shop at ASDA you make a few people very rich and everyone else (including everybody in your own community - that's you, your family, your neighbours) very poor.

[Happ Hazzard 10]

What do the Walton family do that the owners of other supermarkets don't?

 

I'm fairly sure that Asda pays both taxes and wages. Maybe not as much of both as some would like, but you could say that about any firm.

[ronthenekred 10]

What do the Walton family do that the owners of other supermarkets don't?

 

I'm fairly sure that Asda pays both taxes and wages. Maybe not as much of both as some would like, but you could say that about any firm.

 

 

http://consumerist.com/2007/07/03/walmart-took-secret-life-insurance-policies-out-on-employees-collected-after-their-death/

 

When you consider that wallmart employ those ready to die (OAP's)it does seem a tad cynical.

Edited August 24, 2013 by ronthenekred

[Staunton 18]

What do the Walton family do that the owners of other supermarkets don't?

 

I'm fairly sure that Asda pays both taxes and wages. Maybe not as much of both as some would like, but you could say that about any firm.

 

Have you not heard of that phenomenon known as tax avoidance - it is a practice more or less universal among the multinationals.

 

And since the OP has highlighted the eclipse of front-line staff at ASDAs Woodseats store, perhaps you might like to explain just what ASDA does do for the community. If they don't pay their taxes (they don't) and they don't employ people in any number, what do they offer?

 

Can ordinary people set up in competition against a giant like ASDA?

 

Can the handful of staff that ASDA does employ locally (on low wages, of course) keep the local economy going?

[Happ Hazzard 10]

Can ordinary people set up in competition against a giant like ASDA?

Of course. ASDA started off as a small business. So did Walmart. In 50 years time there will be giant business that today are just small operations.

 

If you don't like Asda, or large multinational firms, don't do business with them. You don't have to. It's not like the public sector where you have to give them money whether you want to or not.

[Rupert_Baehr 10]

Have you not heard of that phenomenon known as tax avoidance - it is a practice more or less universal among the multinationals.

 

So that's the evidence you use to support your claim that ASDA are tax avoiders? - Pretty weak evidence for such a serious claim, isn't it?

 

and since the OP has highlighted the eclipse of front-line staff at ASDAs Woodseats store, perhaps you might like to explain just what ASDA does do for the community. If they don't pay their taxes (they don't) and they don't employ people in any number, what do they offer?

 

Can ordinary people set up in competition against a giant like ASDA?

 

Of course they can! They can set up corner shops/village shops and all the good people of Sheffield (and Leeds, of course) will flock to them so that they can support their local community, won't they?

 

Or are you going to say that people are more interested in the price they pay?

 

Can the handful of staff that ASDA does employ locally (on low wages, of course) keep the local economy going?

 

They wouldn't have to. The corner shops (Which everybody will rush to support) can employ more people than they need at very generous rates of pay. - The people who shop there would be pleased to pay a little lot more for the things they buy, wouldn't they?

 

Retail is a highly competitive business. The customers who use retail outlets are usually very price-conscious. If you want to persuade a retailer to increase his prices to a level which exceeds considerably those charged by his competitors, you're first going to have to prove to him that he will still get customers.

 

Would Do you shop at the most expensive stores? - Or do you, like most other people, consider the price?

[Staunton 18]

Of course. ASDA started off as a small business. So did Walmart. In 50 years time there will be giant business that today are just small operations.

 

If you don't like Asda, or large multinational firms, don't do business with them. You don't have to. It's not like the public sector where you have to give them money whether you want to or not.

 

I don't do business with them. But my absence from their stores does not seem to have brought their empire down.

 

This complacency, this constant defence of multinationals and their tax avoidance, their low-wage and job-cutting agenda, is unforgiveable. What exactly do you want people here in Sheffield to live on?

 

There is regular abuse directed at the unemployed here on sheffieldforum.

 

There is a dismissal of concerns relating to the zero-hour contract.

 

There is routine refusal to take seriously the theme of aggressive tax arrangements designed specifically to avoid UK revenue and customs on here too.

 

Perhaps you might care to explain how these phenomena impact upon ordinary people here in this city?