Originally Posted by Gareth
Where to start. I think other people answered my question about your family man. Personally, and I am sure I am going to hear it, but if you are old enough to have a wife and 2 kids, then you should have gained enough marketable skills to make more than minimum wage. If you have made the choice to bring children into the world, then you should have given at least lip service to what they cost to raise. Unfortunately, the sad reality of life is that unless you have a high paying job, wifey now needs to contribute to the family income to survive. That's the effect of women coming into the workforce since the second world war. If you want the trappings of comfort - nice car, nice house, you need two incomes, or at least one and a half.
Back to your self-employment thing. If everyone was self employed, the workers would be self employed companies. But that's unrealistic. If you had NO new self employed people, then who would hire the workers? There has to be some balance, but more businesses means more jobs to choose from.
Your doctors question is a result of poor planning by government. One of the benefits of the NHS is the ability to plan. We should only be creating enough doctors to fill the projected positions available in the NHS. Its never going to be perfect, but you shouldnt be creating thousands more skilled persons than needed. I was back in Lancashire over the Christmas break attending the wedding of two student doctors. They told me that they are having to train extra doctors in order to fill the projected slots of women doctors taking family leave in their careers. Our doctors might not get immediate employment, but it should be forthcoming in short order.
And what would I allocate them as a benefit job? How about visiting homebound pensioners to check to see if they are warm and healthy? I am sure there are plenty of people like yourself who would love a friendly face who could spend some time with them.
54 Year old engineer, electrician, plumber, accountant? I am surprised that a plumber and electrician aren't immediately self employable? Growth in compensation isn't something that should naturally come with age, it should come with growth in value. This comes with experience and knowledge. If you have spent your career not gaining more experience, or you still suck at what you do, you don't deserve more money, and that's no-one's fault other than your own.
I would take some of those unemployed accountants and have them help start-up businesses. People generally love what they do being self employed. They don't love bookkeeping, sales generation and all the other things that are vitally important to running a business. People typically don't fail in business because they aren't good at what they do, they aren't good at the core tasks of running a business. And the government should pay them to do it as it will create all kinds of jobs and tax revenues. And what REALLY drains the lifeblood of business, is having to pay more tax to fund lazy capable people sitting on the dole for their life.
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