The UK is being held back by a business culture dominated by decades of short-term profit taking

[barryqwalsh]

Although Britain is experiencing record levels of employment, low wage growth and persistent inequality have been widely cited as reasons for the Brexit vote.


Thinktank calls for major overhaul of Britain's economy

 

[frigidweirdo]

Although Britain is experiencing record levels of employment, low wage growth and persistent inequality have been widely cited as reasons for the Brexit vote.


Thinktank calls for major overhaul of Britain's economy

Yes, the UK economy is going in a direction that the normal person should not be happy with. High streets are becoming dead, are dead in many places, Amazon's paying little tax.

Most places have generic town centers. Smiths, Boots, Superdrug, Argos, Debenhams, Zara, whatever, you can find the same shops in the same towns and cities in almost every place you go. London is better in these respects, if you get away from the main centers.

 

[shockedcanadian]

UK suffers from the same nepotism and cronyism that Canada does.

Change profit reporting to semi-annual, or even annual reporting.

 

[Toro]

The problems of low wage growth and inequality have nothing to do with whether or not a company meets its quarterly earnings.

 

[shockedcanadian]

The problems of low wage growth and inequality have nothing to do with whether or not a company meets its quarterly earnings.

Of course it does, at least somewhat. It prevents them from offering raises as they don't want to miss the next quarters profit targets, afraid they won't be able to increase revenue to offset the increase in wages in time for said announcements.

Instead, if an annual report were in place, you could give a raise in Jan. or Dec and assume by end of fourth Quarter Dec or Jan of next year as the case may be, that you could make up for increases in wages, especially if you consider inflation. More importantly though, businesses wouldn't be shortsighted and focus on longer term decisions.

Now, I won't say it's the MAIN reason wages have been stagnant. The main reason is outsourcing of jobs to low wage regions of the world and Executives already feel you are earning too much at $16/hr so best not increase your wages, since labor is in such supply and cheap outside of Western civilization. Chasing profits in the short term certainly doesn't help.

We need to rethink our priorities some. Give far more weight to socially responsible businesses, add in such Goodwill in stock prices. Yes, as the case may be, have government apply tariffs to abusive nations to offset the exploitation. Our liberty may depend on this.