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Idiot is, yes, idiot

It’s as if an economist had never heard of labour hoarding, or of recruitment and training costs. Indeed, had not heard of Ford and his $5 a day:

But this means wage cost per employee time worked has gone up by a third when the business is facing a massive downturn in its business and threat to its survival or it would not be thinking about doing this. Wage cost to the business is now £13,333.

So rationally, any business that knows this might last for at least six months, as the government says we should expect, will look at this scenario and sack half its employees and get the same work for much less cost.

In fact, any business facing this situation will probably have no choice but sack staff and nit use this scheme if it is to survive. That’s because any scheme like this is an invitation to make people redundant, and not a job retention scheme.

Let’s sincerely hope that Sunak does not deliver this CBI created idea.

It’s even as if a commentator on current politics and economics was unaware that this is the German scheme so praised by so many.

39 thoughts on “Idiot is, yes, idiot”

  1. Not to mention redundancy costs.

    Anyway, he is projecting. What better spur for the hard Left than a massive and sudden increase in unemployment?

  2. Dunno, Tim. This all seems like insane, wacky bullshit to me. As in, the whole thing.

    Whatever happened to the rigid philtrumness of I’m quite all right, Barbara, I ran it under a cold tap?

    We have a supposedly Tory government still shutting down the economy, taking away people’s liberties, and massively expanding the state over… a cough with a 99.72% survival rate. Fuck me.

    Mr Ecks did nothing wrong.

  3. Where I would definitely disagree is the idea “this might last six months” Months? More like years. I’d say in six months whole swathes of the economy will still be contracting & will continue to do so for some time. I doesn’t appear anyone’s any idea the sort of economic damage is being done. Governments have put economies into a doom loop. They’ve created a whole lot of positive feedbacks in a contractionary direction. Just reversing that’s going to be difficult enough.

  4. I agree.

    We’re watching, and being required to particpate in, terraforming.

    From the start, the governmental response, on the economic side, has been to legislate/regulate/’issue guidance’ on the basis of ‘la-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you’ in the face of the chill winds of economic doom. For instance, the ban on enforcing landlord’s possession orders. For instance, the suspension of the wrongful trading laws. For instance, the ban on refusing to supply, under the genius Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act.

    We are all, now, magic money junkies.

    It’s not going away in six months.

    Breaking this cycle will take bigger testicles than the present inmates possess.

  5. Tim it is a giant YTS scheme whereby you do the 1/3 of a real days work your “employer” has for you and instead of make-time –like old YTS youths had to do, sweeping up, tidying etc –you can go home. Prob to avoid adding more insult to injury. The scummy state pays the 2/3 of your wages via funny money.

    It is a scheme to keep millions off dole Q and is stupid. Fuck whether the Krauts gave it an award–Iron Cross was it?.

    It is Furlough 2 and will be as if not more expensive. Money we dont have to prop up Zombie firms with Zombie workers. It could be part of the new normal corporate socialist evil but they have no real money to pay for it. So funny money-print overtime to stoke inflation.

    And the jobs will last as long as the subsidy. Not to mention the opportunities for fraud etc.

    Only a twin Turd-team like Blojob BlueMarxist Johnson and Ritchie Spewknack could have pulled together a regular Sargasso Sea of evil and stupidity to continue our destruction.

  6. “From the start, the governmental response, on the economic side, has been to legislate/regulate/’issue guidance’ ”

    Particularly this, M’Lud. The government’s got such a good record on planning economies, hasn’t it? It can’t even get the bits it’s supposed to be responsible for to run properly. What are you headed for? An entire economy based on the principles of the NHS?

  7. Also it occurs that surely the 2/3 top up wont take you up to a FULL wage(or what a full wage would have been were you working a real job) because that would be more than your 75% Furlough 1 scam. A pay increase via tax payer. So -assuming that you can’t get more than you were on furlough with–you will have travel and other expenses to meet from your (same?) money–so many will receive a pay cut on top of the 25% income reduction furlough has already got them and now they are having to travel and work for the money. Alright it isn’t much work and it is a pay papercut but still.

    BiS/MrLud–I agree with what you say. But Germany and Japan were flattened and they came back. Their work ethic being their greatest asst. We can recover. But we cant roust these present fuckers until the effects of their shit bites. Sunak–by going Furlough 2 has likely given himself and his Satanic master longer to fuck us up. At a cost of a much tougher come-to-find-out.

    #HOW MUCH LONGER CAN THE FUNNY MONEY BE SPUN OUT FOR IS THE QUESTION. Why are scumbags like Blojob seemingly immune to the econ problems of Weimar or Venez?

  8. Here’s what we could’ve won:

    23rd September 2020
    Swedish Coronavirus new deaths: 0
    Swedish Coronavirus new cases: 239
    Swedish economic suicide: narp

    Really makes u think.

  9. @Steve

    The media’s insistence that Sweden no longer exists is a baffling one. At best they mumble about population density. Whilst parts of Sweden are barren wastelands, close to 1,000,000 people live in Stockholm with no lockdown whilst we are putting barely inhabited parts of Wales into lockdowns.

    “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.” Charles Mackay

    The herd in charge of us have a collective dose of mad cow disease.

  10. Bloke in North Dorset

    Andrew C,,
    “The media’s insistence that Sweden no longer exists is a baffling one. At best they mumble about population density. Whilst parts of Sweden are barren wastelands, close to 1,000,000 people live in Stockholm with no lockdown whilst we are putting barely inhabited parts of Wales into lockdowns.”

    Numbers are starting to creep up and someone who’d like to see us locked down forever has gleefully posted this on a private forum (so no lnk):

    <blockquote)Meanwhile
    Stockholm faces local restrictions after rising infections
    Stockholm could face new local restrictions to curb the spread of coronavirus, as health officials warned of “worrying signs" in the Swedish capital.
    Sweden, which has so far chosen not to use lockdowns to tackle the virus, is also seeing early signs the number of infections is increasing nationally, experts have said.
    Stockholm’s top health official has raised the alarm about a rise in cases in the region.
    "What we can see are worrying signs that the spread of infection is increasing," said Bjorn Eriksson, the Stockholm director of health and medical services, said on Tuesday, according to local media.

    “The downwards trend is broken. We can only hope that this is a blip, that the spread start decreasing again. That depends on how well we follow the guidelines.”

    Those are all quotes from the Independent which seems to be leading the charge against Sweden’s approach.

    Expect to see the same from the rest of the MSM, there’s a large number of people out there desperate for it to go horribly wrong for Sweden.

  11. Let’s say Wuflu really is the second coming of the Black Death, tho.

    Thought experiment …

    … you’ve still got to justify the current reaction to it with reference to how many that reaction will kill.

    Haven’t you? Does anyone see any attempt at such a justification?

    Mr BiGly posed this question right here, back in about late February: what’s worse, the disease or the cure?

    In other news, I’m thinking of becoming a Spiv.

  12. Edward Publicchoicetheory Lud

    To put it another way: why aren’t we seeing TPTB trying to massage or dismiss or wave to one side the other deaths?

    Why aren’t they even addressing those other, consequential deaths?

    Before Mr in Spain gets in, yes, there’s the public choice theory explanation, and it’s a good explanation …

    … but why is no one, outside a few thousand online peeps like us, noticing this?

  13. OT but I did so like this article sub head.

    Office romances are hard-wired into us – I wouldn’t be here without one – Rowan Pelling

    Yes, one wondered how she came to be writing columns for the Telegraph

  14. but why is no one, outside a few thousand online peeps like us, noticing this?

    Because the Handoncocks and other bedwetters in Gubmint are listening only to our idiot savant far-along-the-spectrum experts, all of whom seem to have retinis pigmentosa, where the only thing they can see is COVID

  15. You’d think everyone in Sweden lived in a log cabin in the mountains, judging by how social media now portrays it. People never seem to have heard of Stockholm, Gothenburg or Malmo. A third of the population lives in these three cities, 85% of the population lives in urban areas.

    Sweden, gone from the darling Utopia (actually, Shanghai-La) of the Progressive set to genocidal maniacs in under six months. The cognitive dissonance must really be hammering the Proggies.

  16. Has the Elysian Potato explained the monetary collapse of Argentina in the light of MMT? 38% interest rates, lack of any foreign buyers for Argentine pesos, use of the US Dollar as the real currency in the streets, 16%+ unemployment. I would ask the great Spud but he would only accuse me of wasting his time, which is so valuable that no one wants to pay for it

  17. Off topic, a simple hack during these pressing times when weekends away and short breaks are impossible. At weekend sleep in a guest bedroom single bed. Leave the TV on at night in the living room, loud. It is almost like being on a city break or B&B in the country. To make the weekend even more special, get some foods and drinks you don’t usually buy, saveloys and pease pudding for instance.Turn off the heating, place the assortment of pubic hairs on the toilet and bathroom floors.

  18. Bloke in North Dorset

    Off topic, a simple hack during these pressing times when weekends away and short breaks are impossible. At weekend sleep in a guest bedroom single bed. Leave the TV on at night in the living room, loud. It is almost like being on a city break or B&B in the country. To make the weekend even more special, get some foods and drinks you don’t usually buy, saveloys and pease pudding for instance.Turn off the heating, place the assortment of pubic hairs on the toilet and bathroom floors.

    If that’s the standard of accommodation on weekend breaks I’m glad we bought the motorhome 🙂

  19. Diogenes: I would ask the great Spud but he would only accuse me of wasting his time, which is so valuable that no one wants to pay for it

    That’s very good. I like the idea of Elysian Potato Fields too.

  20. “The scummy state pays the 2/3 of your wages via funny money.”
    No the Company pays you 1/3 of your wage for working, and a further 2/9 of your wage for not working. The Government pays you 2/9 of your wage for not working. The final 2/9 you don’t get at all.

  21. ND Reader–This was not mentioned by Spewknack in his Twits. I presume that you have managed to read the small print.

    So 3/9 s from Co FOR working
    2/9 for not working–this is Spews “% of furlough cash that must be paid by employer” from Sept I think, so 5/9 from employer and much lesser 2 ninths from scummy state.

    So 5/9 ths have to be paid by employer. That can only be done if employer HAS enough work to survive paying you 5/9 of your income. And the Govt 2/9 top up doesn’t really help the employer . It obliges you to come in and work which helps the employer–but if he is fucked already this scheme won’t keep him afloat.

    The Govt pays much less than furlough. And furloughed HAVE to work for what they prev got for nothing but only if employer can stay afloat. So the dole q will grow. I cant see Spewnavk’s scheme keeping that many off UC.

    Is that a fair analysis?

  22. This is the important point here: will this new cockrot function as a 2nd Furlough and keep off dole the millions that Blojob and his little mate want kept off dole. I orig thought it would ( until the funny scrip ran out) but now I’m not so sure. This is crucial. The more enraged UC claimants there are the more the pressure grows on Blojerk. If the Furlough could be kept on in altered form that gives him more time to wreck us. But if not he is in real trouble.

    What do you all think–esp Tim ?. You have knowledge of the orig German caper–how did it work?

  23. will look at this scenario and sack half its employees and get the same work for much less cost.

    What sort of idiot would think that a business that figured it could sack half its workforce while getting the same amount of work from the rest wouldn’t have done that long ago – Corona or no?

  24. There was something on the wireless saying that as more middle class people get pushed into surviving on benefits via the Corvid support schemes, there will be more and more pushback as these people discover how little money they are expected to live on compared to what they were on before.

  25. Please tell me these lock-downs and other measures are not part of some softening of the population ahead of energy restrictions caused by renewable energy sources. Not enough juice in the grid, some parts of the popolation will have restrictions, say home arrests, energy use controlled by compulsory smart meters.

    Have I gone over the brink?

  26. I wonder this too, Jussi. Maybe the morons have realised the consequences of their net zero pledge. It is only achievable if the population is locked down and industry destroyed

  27. “What sort of idiot would think that a business that figured it could sack half its workforce while getting the same amount of work from the rest wouldn’t have done that long ago – Corona or no?”

    Not necessarily. A business say had 50 employees before covid, there was enough business for them all. Covid hits, and trade drops through the floor, maybe they have to shut. Staff are all furloughed at no cost to employer. Trade picks up, they re-open, but with maybe half the staff, as thats all thats needed to do the work, the rest are on furlough still.

    The question the employer now faces is he has only work for half his staff, either half of them full time or all of them part time. Does he a) sack 25 of them and keep the business running with the other half in full time employment or b) bring back the 25 off furlough but put them on 50% hours, reduce the others to 50% hours (thus p*ssing them off as its a pay cut), all the while having to pay more in wages than if he went for option (a)?

    My feeling is people will cut headcount and keep fulltime employees only (who are happy to have a job and thus easier to manage) than have loads of part timers, many of whom are now annoyed that they’ve worked all through the lockdown, but now are getting a less wages than the ones who had a 6 month holiday on 80% pay. Thus making employee management far harder. And safe in the knowledge that as unemployment is on the rise there will be lots of decent applicant for new jobs if trade picks up and the employer wants to hire.

  28. Well, the guy says ‘the same amount of work’ – so there’s that.

    And yeah, businesses will sack half the workforce if only half the work is needed – yes, that half will be pissed about being sacked but simply reducing everyone’s hours *pisses off your whole workforce* and the good half will drop resumes immediately and leave on their own as soon as a full-time job offer elsewhere comes up.

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