Thursday, June 10, 2010

Cuts and opportunities

TMP remains quietly confident that most wealth-dissipating organisations can easily lose 30-50% of their stipends and overheads, without the essential wealth creators suffering any real damage. This time around, the Chancellor has very few options but to try and recreate an economy were wealth creation can take place rather quickly. There is no more family silver to flog, and Brown gave away the gold. Added to which Obama is currently playing some pretty crude politics with what was once the UK's largest wealth creator and tax payer.

The real challenge this time will be to deal with all those displaced from the pampered world of public employment into the real world of common sense where the wages are earned, not gifted. Add to that the number of people on benefits of one sort or another, plus the unemployed over 50s who are now widely regarded as unemployable in the age of modern technology and there is a very big challenge indeed for employers who have grown used to cheap call centre workforces and low-grade staff that are propped up by "on-screen" scripts. 

The only possible answer left is the creation of a lot of wholly new businesses. As luck would have it, technology provides the means for those business to exist and operate with unprecedented ease and efficiency in the 24x7 world that we find ourselves in. Sadly, nearly all of that technology is monopolised by US behemoths such as Google, Apple, eBay, PayPal, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook etc. - mostly because the US government created (by accident or design) a climate in which those businesses could be funded and grown.

How about a real effort to establish British derived and owned versions of these businesses? Is there any alternative? There is no rocket science involved, just (surprisingly modest) investment, determination and the right climate where the Brits who presently flock to these US-owned behemoths are once again reminded what's good for them.


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