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Boris Johnson wants UK businesses to outsource and automate away low paid jobs

· UK affairs

Boris Johnson is of the view the government should strongly encourage UK companies to eliminate low paid jobs, be it via automation or off-shore outsourcing. You can tell he thinks that because he supports the notion of a state imposed ‘living wage‘, by which low productivity employees are priced out of a job entirely, thereby ending up welfare dependent wards of the state. I really do look forward to his attempt to become the leader of the Tory Party 😐

July 6th, 2015 |

16 comments to Boris Johnson wants UK businesses to outsource and automate away low paid jobs

  • The Sanity Inspector
    July 6, 2015 at 9:37 pm

    He must have forgotten the Tottenham riots. A non-working, dole-drawing population will not be lolling in cafes, but smashing them up. “The devil finds work for idle hands.”

  • Billll
    July 7, 2015 at 12:16 am

    Oh come on, Boris, it can’t be that hard to automate dole collection and enable sending the now surplus humans to somewhere that needs them.

    Aren’t there several places in the world where cannibalism is still practiced?

  • Bill (not the one above)
    July 7, 2015 at 12:40 am

    Let us assume the Bastiat’s “Fallacy of the Broken Window” is completely and utterly false. Then we can predict that riots will have an economic stimulus that will bring back Britain into prosperity with everyone being busy: the unemployed drawing welfare now have time to riot, smash, loot and burn, the trades being employed to repair that damage, shops restocking their looted and destroyed goods, wholesalers shipping more goods, insurance companies doing more business (even if it is to deny claims due to ‘civil insurrection’ clauses).

    Those who claim that there needs to be a minimum wage for everyone fail to realise that, in practice, the minimum wage for an employee is £0.00 per hour (or whatever your local currency is) since that is what you have to pay someone who you can’t employ when the value they bring to the business doesn’t exceed the cost to the business. Governments don’t need to worry about such details, and almost never do, so they assume that private businesses don’t need to either.

  • Regional
    July 7, 2015 at 1:53 am

    It’s a cunning plot to alienate a large chunk of the electorate so they’ll never hold office and try to repair the damage done by the Caledonian Marxist who incidentally was replaced by a Fascist. UKIP a Fascist organisation will replace Labour as the voice of the Left.

  • Nicholas (Self-Sovereignty) Gray
    July 7, 2015 at 2:22 am

    If we eliminate low-paying jobs, then people will have to accept high-paying jobs, and productivity will improve! What’s the hassle? It sounds like a great plan to me! After all, if we outlaw cleaning services, for instance, then people won’t make waste or litter, so offices will be tidier. Social engineering is fun!

  • BigFatFlyingBloke
    July 7, 2015 at 5:40 am

    He must have forgotten the Tottenham riots. A non-working, dole-drawing population will not be lolling in cafes, but smashing them up. “The devil finds work for idle hands.”

    A non-working population will eventually lead to civil unrest regardless of whether they are on the dole or not however in the latter case they won’t be wearing Addidas tracksuits.

  • Stonyground
    July 7, 2015 at 6:51 am

    Isn’t this another example of the government trying to relieve people of their personal responsibilities? If you are in a poorly paid job, isn’t it your responsibility to brush up your skills so that you can move up to a better one, either with your current employer or with a different one?

  • Paul Marks
    July 7, 2015 at 8:01 am

    As I have said before…..

    When I found out that Boris Johnson (as a student of Classics at Oxford) kept a bust of Pericles in his room, it told me all I needed to know about Mr Johnson.

    Mr Boris Johnson is not sound.

  • Mr Ed
    July 7, 2015 at 9:01 am

    AndrewWS: I think it should be ‘Boris Johnson is found wanting‘.

    I suspect that Mr Johnson knows full well what he is saying and the consequences that would follow, but he thinks first about politics and the consequences matter not. Just as I recall seeing Mrs Thatcher, supposedly a foe of public spending, saying to some project that she was visiting that the project would get one and three-quarter million pounds, an aide corrected her saying that the sum envisaged was one-and-a-quarter million, and she said something like “Well it will now be 1 3/4 million pounds“. Rather than accept personal error or show any humility, a typical politician will do what makes them feel better, even if they know they are wrong.

  • Watchman
    July 7, 2015 at 11:16 am

    This sounds like a great idea, creating more international trade links (lessening the incentive for violent disputes) and cultural understanding (now people are realising call centres are perhaps better placed in the same culture anyway…), whilst automation has been to the benefit of everyone (less people employed in automatable work equals lower costs). Can’t say I like the method chosen to achieve it, but I suddenly realise there is an upside to the living wage.

    As to the idiocy that unemployed people will riot, I presume the commentators suggesting this have never been unemployed? The actual riots in question were over the death of someone who cannot be said to be unemployed (being a dangerous criminal is definitely a career, and maybe even a profession), and many of those arrested were employed or were students. A fair number were also other professional criminals. Most unemployed people are between jobs and are not going to riot, and most of the long-term unemployed are unlikely to riot due to either being unable to do so or too bloody lazy. I think those suggesting the riots were about unemployment may be confusing unemployment with lack of will from the police (remember, when the police were reminded to do their jobs the riots died down) and opportunism from people who may or may not have believed they had grievances against society at large due to being told this by culpable idiots. The rioters chose to riot as individuals – unemployment did not make them do so.

  • Bogdan from Aussie
    July 7, 2015 at 12:02 pm

    You are a pathetic fool Watchman. The blabbering of an individual equipped with the semi-totalitarian mind NEVER creates any meaningful employment.
    This is being done by the very spontaneity of the so called MARKED FORCES freed from the inarticulate blabbering of high ranking individuals equipped with semi-totalitarian mind.
    If the people want to be employed on the better paid jobs, they have to prepare themselves better for the adult life by pursuing the right education.
    Those lazy enough who fail to do so must remain contend with the salaries offered them by the prospective employer willing to employ those sorry ass warmers…
    Couldn’t be simpler.
    Greetings from EUNUCHALIA.

  • Watchman
    July 7, 2015 at 1:21 pm

    Bogdan,

    You may have missed the mild irony? Although I do believe that greater outsourcing and automation are good things (because an economically linked and more leisured world sounds pretty good to me – it makes it more difficult for those who would use identity politics to divide us and control of employment to control us), I am pretty clear these will happen because of markets anyway (there are no forces in markets – there are simply consumer choices).

    Incidentally, when did it become acceptable to use the statist technique of insulting those you disagree with? Surely it is enough to simply state your disagreement and let reasonable people determine their own mind – the use of attempted denegration is usually a sign of those who cannot hold their case so attempt to demean the messenger (or, in the terms of the thread below this, attempt to reduce their social capital…).

  • Runcie Balspune
    July 7, 2015 at 7:03 pm

    How about automating high paid jobs as well, like the bunch of extortionists who are going on strike tomorrow?

  • Bogdan from Aussie
    July 7, 2015 at 11:39 pm

    Watchman, I concede, my reaction was much too extreme. Sincere apologies…

  • Mr Ed
    July 8, 2015 at 12:40 pm

    The Chancellor of the Exchequer has just said that he does not want businesses to subsidise low wages, so he is introducing a National Living Wage (renaming the National Minimum Wage’), intending to hike it up to £9 per hour over time.

    It will have ‘only a fractional effect on jobs’, costing an estimated 60,000 jobs. He has just, he thinks, given 6,000,000 people a pay rise. He is boasting of the Conservatives introducing State education. With a corporation tax cut to compensate for the higher cost of this imposition.

  • Pardone
    July 8, 2015 at 9:51 pm

    Why should the taxpayer have to pay people’s wages? That is the current situation; wages are not sufficient for people to live on, a ofrm of corporate welfare where the government tops up people’s wages, increasing the debt.

    Low-paid jobs increase the national debt and weaken the economy. They are worthless. The taxpayer certainly should not pay for them.

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