I don't think it was particularly underpaid. It seemed like a fair rate to me.

The problem was that it was two weeks work only.

The applicant said that for two weeks work it wasn't worth his while to take the job because of the problem of stopping and starting his benefits.

Victor summised that obviously the benefits were too high.

He later admitted that the system was wrong and should be adaptable to people taking short term work, but personally I feel his standard and usual response will be to blame the workshy and too-high benefits.

^ This. Absolutely this.

Isn't that simply because more people are working part-time (not necessarily by choice)?

So what's your solution. Build all over the countryside (which I daresay is what will happen when the government thinks the banks can cope with a drop on house prices).

If we'd allowed market forces to wreak havoc on the people who got us into the banking crisis - ie mortgagees, including but not limited to amateur buy-to-letters, then we'd have cheap housing now and the economy would be doing much better. But we have a situation where the disabled, the pensioners, the prudent taxpayer, etc are effectively funding people's mortgages and houses. To me that is morally repugnant.

That wouldn't do much good in the urban areas where we need it most, now would it?

But that wil inevitably be what happens. It's always easier to destroy something that no one places an economic value on that struggle in cities.

I read somewhere the other day that Cameron's "global race" concept was ridiculous because economic growth is not a zero-sum game - ie all / more than one nation(s) can enjoy it simultaneously. Whilst that's true in the short term, overall it will be a zero-sum game because the more rapid growth is the sooner we will endure global environmental catastrophe. We should embrace negative growth and gradually reduce consumption and population before the "market forces" of nature destroy us.

I don't think that stupidity is contagious, but in Dally's case his stupity is so massive that I don't think the world can take the risk. He needs to be killed.

Yes, I believe that is part of the reason for employment going up in a depressed economy.
But is not the explanation for productivity going down.

If we'd let the banks fail, then depositors in the unhealthy banks would have lost all their money (or a very great deal of it) the healthy and half-healthy banks would have suffered a run on their deposits knocking them down like a stack of dominoes, companies would have failed through not being paid and the creditors of those companies would have suffered the same fate, again falling like dominoes, the pound would have plummeted faster than gravity to the point where we envied junk status, hardly anyone would have been paid their wages or salaries, what they did get wouldn't actually buy much, there would have been shortages of ab-so-blee-ding-lute-ly everything and civil riots (or a lot worse) in the streets.

Apart from that though, house prices would be lower, that's true, so I wonder why we bothered really.

I realise that as I have said umpteen times on here since 2008. All policy is aimed at propping up property prices to keep the banking system afloat. I just hope that if and when the banking system becomes sound a one-off tax is levied on windfall tax anyone who had property-related borrowings during the period of crisis. Otherwise, they gain whilst eveyone else effectively pays for their capital asset.