A friend of mine was in Oman in the 90′s. No-one there was unemployed because the state was so rich it could afford to pay them to wash the crash barriers on the motorways. That’s not job creation, it’s job invention, and we can’t afford it here.

The plant was rather effective and productive, but whatever levels of efficiency we achieved, we could not manage to produce steel at a competitive price, as the world price is about £250 per ton, and we have to pay about £100 per ton in carbon tax.

Naturally Mr Tata has closed the steelworks in Redcar as he doesn’t have to pay any carbon tax to make steel in India.

So about 2,000 people in Redcar have been sacked because we can’t make steel for £100 a ton less than the rest of the world. In other words, we have been taxed out of our jobs.

Justification, please?

Manufacturing is good; it employs people. Okay the jobs are often sh*t, but it employs people – lots of people. I started out in a factory: Leyland Motors, later British Leyland. We had hundreds of people in menial jobs making tea, sweeping up … but we also had hundreds of engineering apprentices including me.

Okay shoot me down because BL was inefficient and went bust perhaps because it did employ too many people and made rubbish vehicles. But I think you can see what I’m getting at. If we want to rid ourselves of systemic unemployment, and we have copious quantities, manufacturing is the key.

Final word goes to my 25 year old son: “The government has to do something about creating jobs.” (He has worked as a chef since 16.) He was amazed when I ranted about entrepreneurs like me creating jobs and not governments. And even more amazed when I got stuck into successive UK governments taxing and regulating jobs out of existence.

I have no beef against estate agents, ad copy writers, bankers, etc. By productive, I just meant not tax funded, so we are in complete agreement.

Kay Tie,

You sound exactly like the commenter Tim is quoting. “Who want’s to get into manufacturing?” Gee, let me think. How about, anyone who wants to support their family? Work’s work, you do what you have to do to pay the bills. Maybe you, personally, wouldn’t like to work in manufacturing, but I enjoyed it and would be quite happy to do it again, if the opportunity arose.

My point being, if you want your civilisation to run for centuries to come, and I hope we all do, you cannot have a sizable minority, perhaps even a majority, dependent on the taxes of others. We can already see where this is going, career claimant ghettos and bloody minded bureaucracy. This wouldn’t be happening if everybody had real jobs, adding real value.

You’ve got a fairly solid criticism there, especially as expressed in your last paragraph.

But, though you haven’t said so outright, I get the feeling that it’s your opinion that, other than slamming nails or operating machinery in an auto plant (or, maybe, operating a combine or thresher), other jobs aren’t really “productive.” Where is it that you draw the line? Would you include ad copywriters, tax accountants, finance guys, shelf-stockers, ambulance drivers, etc? My point is simply that, except for those whose subsistence is dependent on forcible extraction
by government, everyone else IS “productive,” i.e, produces or helps produce some good (or service) that everyone (consumers) wants and is willing to buy.. You can even extend “productive” to a fair number whose incomes are paid by the state but whose services are obviously (and sometimes less obviously) required to assure smooth functioning of the rest (esp. police and defense but including a certain number of others, whether or not their services might be more adequately delivered through private-sector means).

When you boil it down, you’ve indicted socialism as the villain; but the only way to reduce negative effects on the larger society is to convince enough fellow-citizens of that connection and to reduce, by democratic means, both the intrusion of the state into nearly every aspect of existence and, concomitantly, the need of the state for so many to carry out those intrusions (and thereby, shrink the numbers of those whose efforts are not only
unproductive but anti-productive).

It’s a tall order but worth efforts of various types to address. (And it’s an effort that accounts, in the main, for the existence of this very blog.)

Not in my trade it’s not. And who wants to get into manufacturing anyway?

I used to work in factory that made electric drills. It was clean, light work, and unlike working in Starbucks it paid enough to support a family.

Writing software for banks? I think you’ll find the Indians have got that sewn up. And yes, I did used to write software for banks.

Produce Intellectual Property like ARM? The risk in separating the design and manufacture is that it’s easier for the manufacturer to get into design than it is for the designer to get into manufacturing. Have you seen how many Chinese study in the USA? You think they’re doing that just so they can make stuff for us more cheaply? Really?

OK, enough anecdotes. I understand the argument, but I believe a functioning society needs to have most of its people in productive employment. Carrying millions of surplus workers in government non-jobs and on welfare is not viable in the long term.

Careful… you’ll have Ritchie complaining about transfer price abuse.