The free-fall in wages

Above:  Perceptive article by Deborah Orr in yesterday's Guardian.  It looks crumpled because I have read it several times.  Essentially she is discussing the labour market and why some workers are paid more than others.

I think she overlooks the issue of "barriers to entry".  With highly specialist workers (surgeons for instance) the barriers to entry are high, and so supply is restricted, and therefore the workers are able to demand higher rewards.  With less skilled workers (care workers or cleaners or production line operatives) the barriers to entry are low and so if the supply of labour is unlimited the rewards will fall to the minimum wage and below.

The working class can only sell labour.  This labour is sold, on an individual basis, to the highest bidder.  Therefore if you want to raise the value of unskilled and semi-skilled labour you must restrict the supply.

Until the 1970s the inward movement of low-cost labour was relatively restricted.  During this time employers had to compete for employees and not only were wages and salaries adequate there were also other benefits such as final salary pensions.  This was paid for by relatively higher prices for goods and services and higher taxes for state provision.

Above:  Article by Zoe Williams in the Guardian some weeks ago basically admitting economic illiteracy among the "Left".

Above:  In the Zoe Williams article I was interested in the line "Real wages in this country have been falling since 1968".  The late sixties was the period when the immigration of unskilled and semi-skilled workers, which began as a trickle after the Second World War, began to have a substantial effect.  If the free-fall in wages is to be halted inward migration must stop.

Obviously I realise that immigration is a taboo subject and must not be discussed.  Even writing these few lines on an obscure blog could lead to me being called a "bigot" or a "hatemongerer".  You would have to be very brave to publicly challenge the inward flow of migrants, even though it is a policy that has never been democratically endorsed.

An example is provided by the experience of Barry Sheerman MP.  A few days ago he made an appeal for restaurants to employ more British workers (rather than the ubiquitous eastern Europeans).  Immediately he came under sustained abuse of the most offensive and bullying kind.

This is not a "fascist" or a "xenophobe" or a "hatemongerer".  This is a respected Labour MP who has sat in the House of Commons since 1979.  If Barry Sheerman is bullied into silence what hope is there for a rational discussion of the most fundamental social change of modern times?

Above:  a screenprint of part of Owen Jones's Twitter page (you might need to click on the image to read it properly).  Here you can see that soon after Barry Sheerman MP's comments were reported in the media Owen Jones accused him of doing something shameful (shameful even to discuss immigration) but he also chose to retweet a comment by someone called Hali accusing Barry Sheerman of "hatemongering".  Owen Jones did not actually make the hatemongering slur himself, but by retweeting it he was presumably endorsing the abuse (Owen Jones is someone who appears on news programmes and politics programmes and writes for various newspapers so he is not a nobody like myself).

So you see how this works.

As soon as anyone speaks there is an immediate move to shut down debate and silence people.

Owen Jones claims to be a supporter of the working class.

I don't think so.