[BITList] Permanently High Unemployment

[HUGH]

Colin,

I get his drift, but I'm not sure what he's saying about health care, unless he's criticising the US version of it - it's not all unnecessary back surgery. Also, I'll have to review my maths re the zero sum game.

I can think on a number of unnecessary, or useful but grossly inflated, "industries" that have grown up and are still growing at vast expense to the rest of us - I speak only of the UK - but produce nothing (ie, nothing) but wages for those concerned.  We'll leave aside the Stock Exchange Casino world for now.  Elfin bloody Safety (at Work) is one. An old church in England has 30 lights on the ceiling.  At least one has gone out, as these things often do, and it's getting dim inside.  They say they are forbidden to use a ladder to replace it - scaffolding, etc, at a cost of £500 is the alternative.  This information will have been conveyed to them by people wearing hard hats at their desks.  A couple of years back, the church I attended had a lighting problem, inasmuch as most of the lights (long fluorescent tubes) were way up in the sky.  Three of us carried in a selection of long ladders, etc, and fitted long chains to the light fittings, thus bringing them closer to earth.  Any heavenly glory they lost was more than made up for by ease of maintenance viashorter ladders.  Around the same time, when an investigation was carried out of spalling at the top of an interior wall (about 60 feet up), the consultants we called in used a very long ladder.  The thing is, they were at work, so the Elfin Safetry (at Work) rules applied to them, hence they took care not to fall off.  We weren't at work when we did the lights, so only the law of commonsense prevailed.

Among other new "industries" I'll cite only those concerned with various social work areas, eg, child protection (aka anti-terrorism), that have long become inflated to bizarre levels.

Hugh.
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