Stuff

[tanngrisnir]

One of the annoying things about not being properly online most of the time is not being able to properly follow the news when it's interesting - as it has been recently. At the Iain M. Banks/Ken MacLeod event in Balloch* last Friday, they were wondering whether or not there might be a revolution of sorts in progress. Maybe... At least PR is now

Comments

[weofodthignen]

I don't really like discussing politics. But take the US system as a warning. Prestige is measured in money in the US - and the UK is increasingly moving in that direction. There's a stark choice between paying rather too much to ambitious people who would otherwise expect to earn far more than they need to live, and who increasingly are affronted if not paid far more than they need to live, because that's how they keep score of their self-importance, and paying less than that - a reasonable amount for the job and not some amount that keeps up with the Joneses (and notice how high the differential is in US corporations between the people who actually do the work and the executive elite, and how the UK has been trundling after that bad example) - and getting only those who are already wealthy. That's what Jefferson wanted because he thought of Gentleman Farmers as good guys who were wealthy because they had good heads on their shoulders and who would have the good of the country in mind, but we don't even have many of those in farming any longer, let alone industry and the law. The US system makes it worse by depending on advertising for the actual election battle, but how else is one to reach Joe Blow the Disaffected Voter who doesn't like reading the papers? Any modern democracy is on the horns of a dilemma - cut-throat ambitious corporate/legal weasels and trust-fund babies like Shrub and most of the rest of the US political establishment, or out-of-touch aristocrats with the money and leisure to play at representing the proles? (Americans would usually put the trust-fund babies in with the aristos - same difference for these purposes.)

In the US system, because everything is about money - and socialism is taboo - almost everyone pays for tax prep., and it's deductible on one's taxes. That's actually quite logical given the complexity of the tax code and the fact the economy here benefits from people paying other people to do things (and from the government keeping back overmuch of almost everybody's taxes and then refunding it, as a source of interest income and an inducement to file); I think you'll have that in the UK soon, too. It's no more a snobbish thing to be recoiled at in horror than having a cleaner come in, which I believe has become more common in the UK since the rise of dual-career households, just as it has in the US: my mother has a cleaner now, my housemate, being a very well remunerated computer geek, has a team from one of the companies that advertise in the Yellow Pages, and I clean a house myself as my second job.

Frith,
M
perennial walker between worlds

[weofodthignen]

PS: I'm not sure where you're coming from in being suspicious of vocations. Maybe thinking of those who take holy orders because they can't face making adult decisions and just want to live in a monastery/nunnery and be looked after? If so, I think some of those people get a rude shock when they see what RC and CofE religious are expected to do these days - as they did in the past when they saw the sleep/prayer/farming schedule under the Benedictine Rule - and there is a vow of poverty involved. I don't think it's cushy any longer, though it certainly is largely free of angst.

But in the modern world a large number of people are in their careers as a calling. Most teachers and almost all university faculty, for one thing - pay may be adequate in some of these jobs (it never was in mine), but it's far lower than schoolfriends are getting for significantly less work. I don't admire social workers, but the same goes for them vs. private practice. And many public service jobs do require a lot of unpaid work; especially in local councils, some of them are genuinely in it to help rather than to show off. Heck, most people who want to be performers never achieve a comfortable income from it, whether they get paid a pittance to do what they love, or spend decades waiting tables and doing other "money jobs." I don't like their attitudes towards those jobs, nor do I think people in sports, for instance, should be paid anything like what they get . . . but the vast majority are suffering for their mania. We usually only see the ones feeding from the trough.

M

[tanngrisnir]

My suspicion is largely over the failure to adequately examine the supposed vocation in certain cases. For example, should a bright kid suggest that they want to be a doctor, this tends to be accepted without challenged even where it should be obvious to anyone who knows the individual that they really are not suited to such a career. This is particularly a risk where one or both parents is a doctor. Similarly, in a religious context it can be the case that a temporary set of life circumstances is mistaken for a calling, with at least stressful consequences.

Yes, vocation is a real thing, and not a bad thing; although, even where there is real vocation it has a downside, which you highlight well: where there is a sense of vocation, it is very easy for employers to put employees in a position where remuneration for the work done is inadequate, sometimes grossly inadequate.

[tanngrisnir]

I think that the recoiling from the idea of having an accountant per se is an odd thing, probably not widespread beyond fairly unintelligent people; but having that paid for by the taxpayer is another matter (small business have to use accountants, and they don't have someone else paying the accountant for them).

Paying MPs a reasonable salary is a sensible thing; the problem is Thatcher's government bottled it and wouldn't ensure that MPs were paid a reasonable amount for their job, so expenses were used to top up the salary rather than as actual recompense for legitimate expenditure on the job.

The US system is one that makes me shudder...