Junior Doctors strike

Germanshepherdsmum

Perhaps rather than comparing doctors with bankers we should compare them with vets. Similar training, working all hours but employed in the private sector. Average first year salary £28,000.

Sorry but you are wrong, average starting salary is now 35K+ and although they need a lot of support in the first few years as far as I am aware there are no more formal exams although they can choose to do additional qualifications if they wish. Most vet practices are now part of large organisations and because vets are in short supply they have to offer very competitive salaries to attract applicants. I have several friends who are vets, my local equine hospital does offer an out of hours service, so their young vets do on call work over the weekend and at night but tbh it is nothing like as intrusive as the rota that the average Junior doctor does. My small animals vet doesn't offer out of hours now but there is a vet 10 miles away who does nothing else and covers all our local small animal vet practices. I have huge respect for vets, particularly large animal/equine vets, who are at great risk of serious injury but to equate their training with that of doctors is very questionable.

Germanshepherdsmum

Thank you for your kind but very patronising lecture Maizie. You assume me to be ignorant of the workings of the banking industry but haven’t told me anything I didn’t already know. Do you really think I believe that a lender transfers a shedload of notes to a borrower? And did I suggest that hyperinflation is likely to occur in the UK? No. Ye gods.

This thread is not about the financial sector, and the comparison is, sorry, plain daft.

I didn’t start that comparison. It is indeed plain daft.
Apologies foxie, I see my information was dated October 2019. Government careers website now shows starting salary £30-£35k.

Germanshepherdsmum

Thank you for your kind but very patronising lecture Maizie. You assume me to be ignorant of the workings of the banking industry but haven’t told me anything I didn’t already know. Do you really think I believe that a lender transfers a shedload of notes to a borrower? And did I suggest that hyperinflation is likely to occur in the UK? No. Ye gods.

In which case, GSM, why did you even bother to mention the Weimar hyperinflation?

I mentioned governments being unable to issue money ‘willy nilly’, if you look back. As I am sure you will agree.

Germanshepherdsmum

I mentioned governments being unable to issue money ‘willy nilly’, if you look back. As I am sure you will agree.

I agree that the state cannot create money 'willy nilly' but that wasn't what I was saying.

I said that banks conduct their business with state 'created' money; either created by themselves or by the BoE.

The exception would be their earnings from foreign business..

As far as I can see the financial services sector exports made up about one third of the total value of financial services to the economy in 2021 (source House of Commons research briefing). The remaining two thirds has to be derived from state issued money (whether newly created or already in the economy), there is no other source of money in the UK.

This whole argument derives from the discussion about junior doctors' pay. I agree that the state cannot create money 'willy nilly' but that wasn't what I was saying.

I said that banks conduct their business with state 'created' money; either created by themselves or by the BoE.

The exception would be their earnings from foreign business..

As far as I can see the financial services sector exports made up about one third of the total value of financial services to the economy in 2021 (source House of Commons research briefing). The remaining two thirds has to be derived from state issued money (whether newly created or already in the economy), there is no other source of money in the UK.

This whole argument derives from the discussion about junior doctors' pay and your contention that financial sector wages aren't paid by 'the taxpayer'. No' they're not directly, but they are paid in the main by profits made from money initially issued by the state. There is little difference between doctors being paid directly by the state and financial sector pay being derived indirectly from money issued by the state. It's all money and it all, apart from those foreign earnings, has the same source.

Apologies to everyone else for my derailing.

An F1 is is a fully qualified doctor. They are currently paid £29,384 for their 40 hours contract at just over £14 an hour. Yes, some of them are working up to 80 hours a week, the extra at the same hourly rate unless working after 10.00 pm at night. But those with young children needing to pay for childcare (and don't forget they need to cover those longer hours) will struggle, and cannot manage to work double hours. And do we really want to be looked after by someone utterly exhausted, with money worries on top?

As far as I can gather it is very very junior , newly qualified doctors that are paid £14 an hour, so why not just give them a payrise?
But I can't see how giving all junior doctors 35% will solve their problems. They need to decide if their main concern is overwork or underpay. Because giving all JDs 35% will just mean that there will be far less funding to pay more doctors.

I think I may give up my job to be a cleaner if so many of you pay them so much. But what would happen to my paid holiday leave, paid sick leave and pension should I retire?

An F1 doctor will pay 9.8% of their pensionable pay towards their pension and about the same amount to pay off their student loan. I think people forget most newly qualified doctors will have a high level of student debt because of the length of their training eg my daughter did graduate entry so was at uni for 7 years in total. I pay my cleaner £17 ph, she's registered as self employed but I do pay holiday and sick pay and she was paid the full amount throughout the pandemic although we asked her not to work. We also keep her supplied with logs for her wood burner and OH does little DIY jobs as she's a single parent. She's got to have an op that will require a number of weeks off work, we'll pay her of course but will be looking for help so if you are interested, do send me a private message as getting cleaners in this area is not easy.

Because giving all JDs 35% will just mean that there will be far less funding to pay more doctors

It doesn't have to mean anything of the sort. There is no actual limit to what the state can pay its doctors. It isn't funded from taxation, nothing the state pays for is funded by taxation.

The refusal to pay any of the NHS staff enough money to compensate for the real terms cuts that they have had to put up with since 2010, not to mention the recent cost of living increase, is a purely political and ideological one.

Maizie, do you seriously believe that everything can be solved by just printing more money - without an increased flow of taxes into the Treasury to underpin it? 35% for the doctors, whatever the ambulance staff want, increases in benefits etc etc etc?

But virtually every single person who works for a living has suffered a real terms cut in pay and the cost in living increase from the single parent on a zero hours contract , the OAP who has no chance of increasing their income, upwards. Doctors and nurses and teachers are no more worse off than as a result of COL than anyone else

I don’t really understand why anyone would think it’s okay to hold down the pay of doctors so that other doctors could be employed. Does that mean that doctors should fund, by reduced pay, the NHS employing more doctors? Of course we need more doctors, but I can’t quite get my head around the idea that other doctors should pay for them.

Anyway more doctors isn’t going to happen whilst the country is bleeding doctors in their thousands to other countries. My own daughter is one of those doctors. I’m not proud of her abandoning her country, but I don’t blame her. She works fewer hours in New Zealand for about the same money. For a parent of three young children, that’s quite important. Doctors have personal lives as well as the rest of us.

I have two sons who work in the private sector. They haven’t had their pay held down over the last ten/twelve years. In fact they’ve both done very well and I’m very pleased about that, but why should their sister not have her pay keep up with inflation just because she worked in the public sector

I don’t think anyone is saying that doctors shouldn’t have a pay rise - just not 35%.

Germanshepherdsmum

*Maizie*, do you seriously believe that everything can be solved by just printing more money - without an increased flow of taxes into the Treasury to underpin it? 35% for the doctors, whatever the ambulance staff want, increases in benefits etc etc etc?

They don't 'print it', GSM. With your deep knowledge of banking you should know that. It's just numbers keyed in on a computer keyboard.

Nothing 'underpins' money, it's a medium of exchange that is taken on trust

Here's the Bank of England again:

^money in the modern economy is an IOU that everyone in the economy trusts. Because everyone trusts in money, they
are happy to accept it in exchange for goods and services —
it can become universally acceptable as the medium of
exchange.^

As the state is the only creator of our money it is the only source of our money (apart from foreign earnings, which make up a small part of our money). The state can only tax after it has issued money. If it taxed without issuing money most of the finite amount of money in the economy would eventually end up back with state and there would be very little left for people to live on...

When the state puts money into the domestic economy, by investment in state services or by directly paying state employees the more it puts in, the more economic activity there is, GDP is increased and the amount returned to the state via taxation increases. 13 years of cutting state spending has shown the truth of this, if nothing else.

The only bar to state spending is a lack of resources available for purchase. You cannot say that the UK lacks resources to purchase when our infrastructure is crumbling and public services are stretched to the limit or being cut.

Her's the Bank of England again on the sources of GDP

Household spending forms the biggest part, accounting for about two thirds of GDP.

www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/what-is-gdp

The source of the household spending is ultimately state issued money. It really doesn't matter if it comes directly from the state or via loans from banks. It's all money, it's all trusted, and increasing the amount of money in circulation will not impair its value in any way and it doesn't need taxation to underpin it. If the state cuts the amount of money it puts into the economy GDP grows more sluggishly or falls.

Nobody worries about banks creating money for new loans, their only 'underpinning is what the state puts into reserves and the understanding that the loans will be repaid. Why worry about the government doing it to pay its employees when we know it will return to it through taxation?

I am not trying to be patronising. I am trying to explain my thinking and its sources.

Germanshepherdsmum

I don’t think anyone is saying that doctors shouldn’t have a pay rise - just not 35%.

It's a 35% claim (which we know they won't get, but it's a starting point for bargaining) which covers an estimated 26% real terms cut in salary over 13 years and 9% to compensate for current inflation.

I am interested in your various posts on Government spending not being related to taxation MaizieD

Why do you think it is that, not just the governing party, but, as far as I can see, all of our political parties keep referring to "taxpayers' money"?

I do understand that the Government doesn’t get its John Bull printing set out, Maizie. Figure of speech. You really don’t need to spend time explaining what I already know.

Your reply to varian will be interesting.

Why do you think it is that, not just the governing party, but, as far as I can see, all of our political parties keep referring to "taxpayers' money"?

It's habit, varian, it's Thatcher's pronouncement that 'there's no such thing as state money, only taxpayer's money' and it's the fact that few people have bothered to trace the source of the money in the economy.

It's also a massively convenient political cover for not increasing, or even cutting, state expenditure for political purposes. Few people argue with the concept of 'taxpayer's money because they believe that that is how the state gets its revenue so they accept ludicrous concepts such as 'austerity' without question.

But the few who have painstakingly examined and analysed government accounting and the law relating to government spending and its relationship to the Bank of England have concluded that without a doubt, government spending comes before taxation and that spending is not dependent on tax revenues.

No need to read it all, just the introduction or conclusion, which, as in all good essays, say the same thing..

www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/sites/bartlett_public_purpose/files/the_self-financing_state_an_institutional_analysis_of_government_expenditure_revenue_collection_and_debt_issuance_operations_in_the_united_kingdom.pdf

I have searched and searched but I haven't found critique of this paper; let alone one which disputes its findings.

In the past two decades the government has 'created' and issued some £900billion of money through quantitative easing; the purchase of treasury bonds on the bond market to release money into the economy. It has had little appreciable adverse effect on the domestic economy; in fact, during the covid crisis it kept the economy afloat . It didn't come from the tax payer and it doesn't have to be repaid by 'the taxpayer' because it wasn't borrowed, it was created.

In fact, the government has always created money into the economy because if the amount the economy had was finite individuals' share of it would become smaller and smaller as the population increases and as people spent it, or stashed it away, or invested it, overseas.

Ironically, for those who wish to cling to the 'taxation funds spending' myth, the more money the state creates into the economy, the more it will get back via taxation...

For as long as I pay taxes I shall refer to taxpayers’ money, as I suspect will most other taxpayers. We are not all as stupid as you evidently think Maizie.

I don't use that language neither do many I know because of its associations with complaining and moaning about supporting vulnerable people of many kinds.

So I dont agree "most other taxpayers".

Germanshepherdsmum

For as long as I pay taxes I shall refer to taxpayers’ money, as I suspect will most other taxpayers. We are not all as stupid as you evidently think Maizie.

Call it whatever you like, GSM but it will never make it fund spending.