Friday 28 November 2008

no regulation equals no productivity

I don't know if I agree with this quote, but it made be think....

"It is no coincidence that the UK has the least-regulated economy in Europe and is the least productive in the industrialised world"

Prof. Cary Cooper

Guardian 20/8/05

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

The reason we are the least productive is that we have made it too easy to not work. Plus why work hard when the govt takes an increasingly large % of your earnings to pay to all the people who don't fancy working at all?

Provide incentives to not work, or work less, and surprise, surprise, you get less productivity. Plus, with an education system that turns out half educated dimwits, its not surprising we can't find work for them all.

K T Cat said...

With all due respect, being the least regulated market in Europe is like being the tallest midget.

Professor Gary Cooper seems to think that what we all need is a good dose of central planning. That worked well in the Soviet Union, didn't it?

Anonymous said...

Our labour force is so unproductive that we can't make a living from manufacturing. So we try to make ends meet from finance, and adopt a regulation policy that is assumed to give us a competitive advantage.

Alternativey, it is a coincidence.

P.S I don't think I've heard "it's no coincidence that..." since communism became unfashionable.

Nick von Mises said...

Can't get fired = don't work hard

Anonymous said...

Left wing professor writes anti-capitalist statement in the Guardian. Ignores policy choices of the last 10 years made by Labour government. Things more regulation like wot them got in the EU would makes us more production (like Italy or France, for example?)

Shocking. Utterly shocking...

Anonymous said...

Did he mention that the government employs 40%+ of the workforce in this country? (That 40%+ is the working workforce, not the sponging dossers - totally 4+ million).

Thought not.

Anonymous said...

I have run teams in the UK. My thoughts? They are unproductive because they have bad work habits (they always get fat after a few months in the job), they are always hungover, they mouth-off because they know they can't get fired, they are thick (dosed on bad TV and sport), and the worst of all, they believe because it is a Labour government, all these problems will just be borrowed away by Great Gordon.

Unknown said...

Working long hours doesn't mean quality of work increases, its common sense. Unfortunately the UK's relatively low wages and high cost of living forces people to adopt a long hours mentality.
Companies increasing desire to increase profits means that they always try to squeeze more out of staff for short term gain, whereas successful European companies take a longer term view, train people, support them, pay them adequately for the job they do and are rewarded by a productive and loyal workforce.
Its simple, if your staff feel like they are being exploited they'll be less productive, if they can see a benefit to being productive they will be.
Semco in Brazil is the textbook example.

Anonymous said...

Gosh, it would appear most of you haven't heard of Scandinavia, Germany or even France.

Still, being a bigot is more fun than working out why these countries have more regulation, higher taxes, harder to sack workers, better welfare and higher production.

Or maybe their attitude is why the UK is the basket case?

Anonymous said...

Makes sense to me. Pure speculation and scamming is an easier way to make a profit than production, and less regulation and oversight give more room for gambling and racketeering. Though I take issue with a great deal of Marx's ideas, his notion that such schemes needs to be taxed to death is hard to disagree with.

Anonymous said...

Remember the man in Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" who succumbs to an apocalyptic wrapping of bureaucratic litter? Meet the modern British worker, struggling for hours every day with pointless paper work thrown at his by the apparatchik classes, public and private.

There are whole classes of workers and "managers" who just create and monitor pointless paper.

Can't face the rock-face any more? Become a "quality" bureaucrat... or anybody who sits around in meetings lazily chewing the cud while others are out doing the work - e.g. child protection management in Haringey.

B. in C.

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Electro-Kevin said...

Oh people are working hard alright, just not productively.

K T Cat said...

When you've discarded religion and the attendant objective moral codes, I guess you need the government to tell you right from wrong.