Has the TUC been brushing up on its Milton Friedman?
It looks a bit like it:
"Also today (Tuesday), the TUC and the unions are releasing 'Six million pay cuts', a new report rebutting all the Government's arguments on public sector pay, including the suggestion that public sector pay is driving inflation, or that holding back public sector pay will help reduce it".
In simple terms, "In the mid-twentieth century, two camps disagreed strongly on the main causes of inflation (at moderate rates): the "monetarists" argued that money supply dominated all other factors in determining inflation, while "Keynesians" argued that real demand was often more important than changes in the money supply". Source Note also that the Great Man commented "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon".
Still, the conversion would not appear to be altogether Damascene: "Public servants do not understand why they are facing cuts in their pay (erm, they do, they are just not exactly gruntled about it). In the current financial year many are having below inflation rises phased, thus further reducing their value. Ministers should remember that they inherited a demoralised and under-resourced public sector from the previous government where below inflation pay had led to difficulties in recruitment and retention, and badly hit the quality of service to the public".
Let us be really, really generous and pretend that the average public servant commences toil at 16, and gets to retire at 65 after 49 years with nose to the metaphorical grindstone. So, let us call it 50 for a nice round figure, which presumably means that 20% of the staffing of schools 'n' hospitals (and all the other ones that lack the ability to pull at the heart strings) are supermoralised and over-resourced? One does wonder quite how traumatised by 'Fatcher' (as metaphor, not person) they must be that they are still in recovery 10 years on.
"Also today (Tuesday), the TUC and the unions are releasing 'Six million pay cuts', a new report rebutting all the Government's arguments on public sector pay, including the suggestion that public sector pay is driving inflation, or that holding back public sector pay will help reduce it".
In simple terms, "In the mid-twentieth century, two camps disagreed strongly on the main causes of inflation (at moderate rates): the "monetarists" argued that money supply dominated all other factors in determining inflation, while "Keynesians" argued that real demand was often more important than changes in the money supply". Source Note also that the Great Man commented "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon".
Still, the conversion would not appear to be altogether Damascene: "Public servants do not understand why they are facing cuts in their pay (erm, they do, they are just not exactly gruntled about it). In the current financial year many are having below inflation rises phased, thus further reducing their value. Ministers should remember that they inherited a demoralised and under-resourced public sector from the previous government where below inflation pay had led to difficulties in recruitment and retention, and badly hit the quality of service to the public".
Let us be really, really generous and pretend that the average public servant commences toil at 16, and gets to retire at 65 after 49 years with nose to the metaphorical grindstone. So, let us call it 50 for a nice round figure, which presumably means that 20% of the staffing of schools 'n' hospitals (and all the other ones that lack the ability to pull at the heart strings) are supermoralised and over-resourced? One does wonder quite how traumatised by 'Fatcher' (as metaphor, not person) they must be that they are still in recovery 10 years on.
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on Tuesday, December 18, 2007 at 8:30 am.
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Just how traumatized? A good thought.
One other thing I've noticed - your formatting has gone strange [font size and scratchiness] - exactly the same as me here and so it is a Blogger problem, methinks.
Or maybe Firefox.
I've noticed in a lot of this pay debate that the inflation figure of 2.1% is quoted. What would the civil servants do if they found out it's more like 4.2% ?
James - it looks OK to me.... I know a few public sector types, and none of them seem to suffer from uncontrollable shakes and so forth.
Ed - Indeed, indeed.
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