When I started at Imperial in the late '80s, the difference between those educated in grammar/private schools or abroad (EU/Middle-East/Asia) versus those very few (like myself) educated in an inner suburban (Labour controlled LEA) sub-bog standard comprehensive was staggering.
There's no better experience for building humility than the near-instantaneous transition from being the best of a pile of sh*t to the worst of the worst of the creme-de-la-creme. All Imperial really taught me was that my secondary school education was a near-complete waste of time. In any case, I just about passed my degree.
If I have achieved anything in life, it's by and large in spite of my schooling, rather than because of it. F-f-f-f-thank you, Tony Crosland.
I work for a Tier 1 Investment Bank and get involved in graduate recruiting.
I review CVs that are sent through for interview after they have been screened by HR.
Almost without fail every CV has straight A's and A*'s at A-Level, and an estimated 1st or 2.1 at a good university. 100's and 100's of CVs. Yes the poor CVs are filtered out, but theres a lot of people with straight A's!
The joke is when when I interview John Doe, who has straight A's and an estimated 1st class degree and find he's an idiot with subhuman relationship skills and less than zero ability to solve problems.
Mike, as you are a proper economist of HM Treasury fame, I need your opinion on the following. This figure of 43% for government spending
Prof David B Smith came up with the following figures for the size of the "non-socialised economy". I assume this means the private sector. From his numbers you get 42.75% for government spending in 2001; and 48.75% in 2006.
Is this latter number what the "43%" should actually be?
I blogged on TPA about this as follows. (see URLs below).
“... It can be argued that the state cannot fund itself, and that a more relevant measure of the tax and spending burdens is their ratio to the non-socialised element of national output. This is currently [2001] some 57¼% of the basic price measure of GDP, which has partly replaced, and is broadly equivalent to, the factor cost measure in the new ESA-95 national accounts. Put this way, the state and its beneficiaries are now spending, in total, 74¾p for every pound spent in the private sector and extracting 74½p in non-oil taxes.”
“... It can be argued that the state cannot fund itself, and that a more relevant measure of the tax and spending burdens is their ratio to the non-socialised element of national output. This was some 51.25 per cent of the factor cost measure of UK non-oil GDP in 2005/06, for example. Put this way, the state and its beneficiaries are now spending in total 95.25p for every pound spent in the private sector and extracting 83p in non-oil taxes.”
The first is
http://www.cf.ac.uk/carbs/econ/
m...pubspendnew.pdf
The second is
http://www.iea.org.uk/record.jsp...ype=book&
ID=394
Underdoug-
"There's no better experience for building humility than the near-instantaneous transition from being the best of a pile of sh*t to the worst of the worst of the creme-de-la-creme."
I can well imagine your shock.
As I've said before, I was one of the lucky state school generation that went to uni having attended a state grammar. I can honestly say that while I felt a bit intimidated by the social polish and MONEY possessed by my public school contemporaries at Oxford, I never felt out of my depth with them academically.
Gah... grammar schools... Crosland... Labour dumbing down... Tory cowardice... I'm grinding my teeth again.
AnyonebutBrown-
One of the junior Tylers is in a similar position to you, and has also been involved in recruitment (though not this year I fancy...)
As far as I can see, because the queue to get into investment banks is many miles long, you just don't have the time to consider people who don't have straight As and predicted 1st/2.1s. But for those that do, there's no way of telling whether they have those other skills until you kick them around a bit.
Of course, the old City brokers simply used to recruit from the right families. And in the unlikely event they considered anyone else, the candidate would be given a silver service lunch to make sure he (and it would only be a he) didn't eat peas off his knife.
Have you considered that?
Acorn
Yes, David Smith has done a lot of interesting work on the the public sector's real share of GDP. His main point being that the official figures greatly understate the real burden (eg GDP at market prices includes VAT, so you could reduce the share of tax in GDP simply by switching all revenue raising to VAT).
It's well worth refreshing our collective memory of the various calcs.
I will put together a post.
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