What happens if?

Someone stops working

Every so often refuse collectors in France go on strike, this gives us a wonderful opportunity to see what happens.

Before the strike.

During the strike.

Projection of what would happen if the Government went on strike

Go through a list of jobs and imagine what life would be like if the people stopped working. This is our upside down world where those who work in essential jobs have a lower social status and are paid less well than those who work in non-essential jobs. The ultimate example is of course farmers. Statistics will often be couched in terms like France is 60% self sufficient in food production. What that really means is that French farmers manage to produce 60% of the food consumed in France, not counting the percentage that is exported nor the 70kg or so of food wasted per person per year. So if French farmers stopped working things would get very difficult for people pretty quick. In the end we can say that a farmer can live well and prosper without a politician but not vice versa.

Despite this being self evident, higher social status, and pay, is accorded to the politician. This is unacceptable, how can it be that those working in the most pro-social and the most essential areas are considered to be ‘beneath’ those others whose absence from their workplace would be little noticed? Badly paid, badly treated and seen as disposable and easy to replace economic actors, these essential people deserve better. The intelligentsia, artists, politicians will argue that they play essential social roles yet without food and water they are soon put to bed with a shovel.

Nothing particularly new with all that.

Let us consider the social landscape and the importance that each of us consciously and unconsciously ascribe to social status. I can feel that I have a certain social status and those around me will accord me a certain status. Both of these change in the short, medium and long term. It’s actually quite astonishing how we are all motivated of affected by how we see our social standing and by how other people feel about us.

The other thing which is astonishing is, as I mentioned above, how we ascribe high social status to people who don’t really deserve it and vice versa. In a pro-social world people working to improve the lives of others and people working to feed others would have much higher social status and be better paid for their work.

The basic annual salary of a Member Of Parliament in the House of Commons is £86,584 (plus expenditures). The average salary for a nurse is £34,967 per year, less than half that of the politician. The annual salaries for a farmer in the UK range from £12,060 to £29,448. Post Brexit the very well paid politicians took over 5 years to work out a replacement to the subsidies that UK farmers previously received from Europe and it’s all working so well that only a handful of farmers received any grants in 2023. If farmers were equally as efficient even more people would be going hungry in the UK. If a nurse too 5 years to work out how to help someone”s suffering said nurse would most probably be fired. One can only imagine what our towns and villages would be like if the refuse collectors took 5 years to come around! By the way the national average salary for a Refuse collector is £20,883.

It’s about time that we change all of that and start, personally, to better value pro-social jobs and the people who do them. Those early morning refuse collectors, the nurse who looks after Gran, the farmers out in all weathers, all those people without whom the world would be a much worse place.