Interesting Links for 17-10-2016

[andrewducker]

Do men and women really have different personalities? (tags: personality gender ) Power doesn't make people bad-it just reveals their true natures (tags: power politics personality psychology ) Ironic World Standards Day (tags: world standards usa funny ) Amy Goodman Is Facing Prison for Reporting on the Dakota Access Pipeline. (tags:

Comments

[gonzo21]

The Brexiteers answer to the lack of workers prepared to do those agricultural jobs is just to put the British people to work, I literally heard a conservative MP saying they would replace the Eastern Europeans labouring in the fields with disabled British people who could work for their benefits for a change.

It's a fucking catastrophe though isn't it. I haven't seen a single piece of good news about what Brexit could bring us. Other than 'Taking back our country! Wooo!' Which I still don't know what that means.

[alitheapipkin]

Yep, I saw someone tweeting an article from the Sun suggesting unemployed people and prisoners could be sent to work in the fields. Labour camps, here we come.

Me either. And I really want to know if anyone obsessing about 'sovereignty' actually knows what they mean by it.

[gonzo21]

Then when the poor and desperate who are forced to claw in the fields start to revolt and riot, the police will be sent in to contain them. And it will be all the excuse the Tories need to really crack down on all dissent everywhere.

[andrewducker]

The thing is, I have no objection to to disabled people working, and many* people are happier when they have a job and feel like they are actively engaged in things.

But I have absolutely no faith that it will be done well, and the idea that disabled people are somewhow best suited for hard physical labour seems...unlikely to me, let alone the idea that any government intervention in this area would be done sympathetically.

*Obviously not everyone, particularly not people with mental health issues which make coping with a range of issues hard.

[gonzo21]

Agreed, disabled people in jobs is a very good thing. But yes, the problem is government in tervention will not be sympathetic. It will be disabled people forced to choose between slaving in the fields or starving in the gutter. And it will kill the most vulnerable in society, all for some weird ideology.

[danieldwilliam]

I think it's more likely that labour constraints caused by Brexit result in higher wages for low skilled work,  leading over time to some investment in productivity enhancing technology or machinery. Not necessarily in agriculture but in industries which are subject to highly elastic labour costs.

This will shuggle the labour market around and  (perhaps) create vacancies which disabled people would be suited to fill. They may then be "forced" to take these jobs.

Looking at it from the agricultural business's point of view - why would you want to hire physically disabled workers to do hard physical labour for which they are unsuited when you could hire young strong able bodied people? Or buy a machine?

Although watch out for the lump of labour fallacy operating in reverse.