Are people becoming surplus to requirement?

[Happ Hazzard 10]

Asda pay the wages they need to get the staff they need. They employ as many staff as they need to run the store effectively. Both of these are how all businesses do things.

 

"Agressive tax arrangements"? Nobody wants to pay more tax than they have to. If loopholes are there, why shouldn't Asda exploit them?

 

What is stopping the people of Sheffield from starting their own businesses, that in 50 or 100 years time can be as big as Asda or Tesco? People need to stop waiting around for things to be done for them, and start making things happen themselves.

[Staunton 18]

Asda pay the wages they need to get the staff they need. They employ as many staff as they need to run the store effectively. Both of these are how all businesses do things.

 

"Agressive tax arrangements"? Nobody wants to pay more tax than they have to. If loopholes are there, why shouldn't Asda exploit them?

 

What is stopping the people of Sheffield from starting their own businesses, that in 50 or 100 years time can be as big as Asda or Tesco? People need to stop waiting around for things to be done for them, and start making things happen themselves.

 

What is stopping ordinary people from starting their own business is a dire lack of funds and the impossibility of competing against the all-powerful multinationals. They talk of competition but simultaneously attack any and every form of democracy as they structure their monopolies. It has been said that Jack Cohen could not possibly compete today against the very empire he founded (Tesco).

 

It is only big business that can use the tax loopholes that deliver vast wealth into the pockets of their executives. These taxes are what pay for the support and services that ordinary people depend upon for their health, and for benefit if they lose their jobs. And as ASDA replace their checkout staff with machines there will be more people unemployed - that has been an inevitable development since their introduction some years ago. So ASDA will have even more wealth with which to destroy competition, subvert the government and reward their executives.

 

These are serious matters - they are fundamental to the very lives and livelihoods of ordinary people here in Sheffield. I am appealing to everyone to reflect carefully on these issues and to understand the dangers of the economy that is being structured before our eyes.

 

I have never used an automated check out and I would strongly urge everyone else to follow suit.

[Happ Hazzard 10]

Supermarkets made people in small shops unemployed. It's called progress. Do we want to go back to the days of the Luddites, with people smashing up the self-scan machines?

[Staunton 18]

Supermarkets made people in small shops unemployed. It's called progress. Do we want to go back to the days of the Luddites, with people smashing up the self-scan machines?

 

So what do you suggest, that we subserviently trot along to ASDA, fill our trolleys, patiently do our own checking out, and hand over our money (including VAT on a significant number of the items that ASDA retail) into the automated technology that is being installed by the tax avoiding multinationals with the clear intention of eliminating those annoying little costs that get in the way of mega profits such as actually employing people?

 

To do so is to harm our own interests - the interests of everyone here in Sheffield..

 

We can be complacent, or we can wake up and start to piece together the implications of the kind of economy that ASDA, Tesco and their government friends are structuring.

[Happ Hazzard 10]

Supermarkets were invented with the intention of reducing costs by being able to employ fewer people than having seperate shops. How far back do you want to go? Every technologival innovation that has made people's lives easier has eliminated jobs in the process.

[Staunton 18]

Supermarkets were invented with the intention of reducing costs by being able to employ fewer people than having seperate shops. How far back do you want to go? Every technologival innovation that has made people's lives easier has eliminated jobs in the process.

 

Would you agree with me that anyone who shops at ASDA in Woodseats, who uses their automated technology to process their own shopping, is harming the interests of everybody here in Sheffield?

 

---------- Post added 24-08-2013 at 18:17 ----------

 

Happ Hazzard seems remarkably reluctant to answer? Perhaps this signals a preference for the interests of the multinational tax avoiders rather than ordinary people here in Sheffield?

[chem1st 10]

Asda pay the wages they need to get the staff they need. They employ as many staff as they need to run the store effectively. Both of these are how all businesses do things.

 

In this country, some companies such as ASDA get wage/labour subsidies in the form of free labour (workfare), direct cash subsidies (apprenticeship grants for example), tax credits and housing benefit for workers to top up wages.

We also have structural unemployment and the unemployed are mandated look for work and this in turn puts downwards force upon wages.

 

---------- Post added 24-08-2013 at 22:10 ----------

 

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???

 

With winter fuel allowance it seems to be the summer heatwave that is killing off the elderly nowadays.

[Rupert_Baehr 10]

...

With winter fuel allowance it seems to be the summer heatwave that is killing off the elderly nowadays.

 

Would that be the 22'C heatwave?

[Redyam 10]

Just wait until the robotics revolution is upon us.

 

- no more taxi drivers due to self driving cars.

- no more staff at fast food joints, everything is cooked and served automatically.

- pizza delivery via flying drones, cutting out the delivery drivers.

- huge factories churning stuff out automatically, only requiring a few individuals to run.

 

All the profits will concentrate into a few rich billionaires, who keep their money through tax loop holes. Meanwhile the rest of us will be unemployed, with no jobs available, cut down benefits.

 

Welcome to the future.

[Mikes10 10]

Have a look at this lecture 'The World is Flat 3.0'

by Thomas L. Friedman.

 

Its just under an hour in length, about global economics.

 

 

http://video.mit.edu/watch/the-world-is-flat-30-9321/

[Rupert_Baehr 10]

Just wait until the robotics revolution is upon us.

 

- no more taxi drivers due to self driving cars.

- no more staff at fast food joints, everything is cooked and served automatically.

- pizza delivery via flying drones, cutting out the delivery drivers.

- huge factories churning stuff out automatically, only requiring a few individuals to run.

 

All the profits will concentrate into a few rich billionaires, who keep their money through tax loop holes. Meanwhile the rest of us will be unemployed, with no jobs available, cut down benefits.

 

Welcome to the future.

 

Solaria.

 

Why would they need tax loopholes? - what would they need to pay taxes for?

[Anna B 1,409]

It seems that a few more people are managing to put two and two together and finally see the way things are going. But considering this argument has been going on since the eighties (some would say the sixties) it's been a long time catching on.

 

We are all complient and have been for a long time. While ever we were on the side of rampant, unfettered capitalism we should have realised that this was the inevitable conclusion. 'Market economics' is after all, the survival of the fittest. We were fine with it while we were on the winning side. But how many of us lifted a finger to help the third world who are also victims of it, except that starting from a lower income, in their most extreme cases, it ends in starvation.

 

Don't think it couldn't happen here. Food banks are just the start. Instead of raging against the unemployed see them as the victims they are. Soon many more of us will be joining them.