Frank Field, the Joe Lieberman of British politics, “has been advising the ConDem government”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/dec/03/frank-field-welfare-sacred-cows on welfare reform. Here’s a sentence to contemplate:
bq. This goal of changing the distribution of income will be achieved by ensuring that poorer children in the future have the range of abilities necessary to secure better paid, higher skilled jobs.
Of course, I can see a way in which that might work. The newly educated poorer children, frustrated at the stultifying low-wage jobs on offer to them, rise up and change the income distribution by expropriating the expropriators. I doubt that’s the mechanism that Field has in mind though.
{ 88 comments }
Charlie 12.03.10 at 11:04 am
Only if they all try to do it at the same time, though. On the other hand, when an exceptional individual drives home a tough negotiation … well, talent demands recognition.
dsquared 12.03.10 at 11:12 am
a working-class version of Mumsnet, the online forum for parents
oh my god. He has out-Frank-Fielded himself.
Chris, I think this is a trend we should get on the front end of. If we got the grants, do you think we could produce a working class version of Crooked Timber? I’m pretty sure that there are some working class people at the end of my road, and the grocer’s son is definitely working class. So if you could find a few more in Bristol, we would probably have enough. John and Brian could post on both sites (as all Australians are by definition working class), and we could sort of take a back seat role, ensuring quality control.
Oh I am beginning to like the “Big Society”.
ajay 12.03.10 at 11:20 am
Bertram: I think at this juncture it would be wise to point out to those of you who haven’t noticed – and God knows it’s apparent enough – that John Quiggin and myself come from good families and have had the benefits of a Public School education. Whereas the other co-bloggers have worked their way up from working-class origins. And yet John and I are working together with them on the blog and treating them as equals, and I must say it’s proving to be a most worthwhile, enjoyable and stimulating experience for both of us.
Scott: Yes. And I should point out that although I am working class, John Quiggin is actually Australian.
Berube: Ooh, I’d much rather be working class than Australian.
Scott: Imagine if you were working class and Australian.
Berube: Well, there’s always someone worse off than yourself.
Freshly Squeezed Cynic 12.03.10 at 11:24 am
by ensuring that poorer children in the future have the range of abilities necessary to secure better paid, higher skilled jobs.
Except that the Tory policy on education seems to be to make the schooling system far less egalitarian, more sensitive to income disparities, and pricing tertiary education outwith the means of many individuals.
Another Roger 12.03.10 at 11:34 am
#2 As a ‘grocer’s son’ (are you still living in 1964? – if so wish I could join you there…) he is clearly not working class but a petit-bourgeois and thus doomed to be no more than a catspaw of reaction.
And if this iteration of FF’s thinking of the unthinkable is truly nothing more than a recitation of literal motherhood and apple pie bromides that have been carefully calibrated to have no major spending implications then he really has irrevocably gone over to the Dark Side.
Pity as underneath it all I used to believe that there was a real commitment to the poor.
Peter Whiteford 12.03.10 at 11:36 am
Real Australians know that we don’t have any classes at all, since social class only exists in England.
chris y 12.03.10 at 11:40 am
are you still living in 1964? – if so wish I could join you there…
Are you under fifty, wishing things like that? – if so I wish I were…
dsquared 12.03.10 at 11:46 am
Yes, the grocer himself is lost to the revolution I fear, but I was chatting to him the other week (on the subject of how I am the only bloke who buys the really cheap Latvian lager these days, probably due to the housing bust), and he isn’t optimistic about the prospects for the lad taking over.
dsquared 12.03.10 at 11:54 am
Actually I’ve spotted a flaw in this one. If the poorer members of society are all going to get higher-skilled and better paid jobs, then isn’t the rubbish going to rather pile up after a while?
Phil 12.03.10 at 12:19 pm
That’s when we go to Phase Two…
Phil 12.03.10 at 12:24 pm
Frank Field’s radicalism has been fairly well hidden for some time. I’ve probably told this one before, but my parents went to see Frank Field at a Christian Socialist Movement event in Brighton. Coming out, my father said, “I’m not sure what that was, but it wasn’t very Christian and it certainly wasn’t socialism.” I haven’t got a precise date on that, but my father died in 2001 & was housebound for a few years before that, so we’re talking mid-90s at the latest.
Zamfir 12.03.10 at 12:26 pm
Mr Squared, that’s not a problem in a true meritocracy with equal opportunities. Because then those with shitty jobs deserve to have them, and those above will be truly justified to look down on them. It will be paradise for all.
Also, brilliant entrepreneurs will solve your problem, but that part only works in the US.
RCJ 12.03.10 at 1:03 pm
Ahh yes we have brilliant entrepreneurs (“BE”) (“the French don’t even have a word for Entrepreneur”)
Our BEs are brilliant in their uses of the ABCs of finance
A is for Asymmetry
B is for Breach
C – oh C is for Corruption
How many BE’s can we send you ? A Peck, perhaps a bushel, or a Lot ? Please take the Lot
Another Roger 12.03.10 at 1:07 pm
#6 – FYI – I am 50 – and what’s wrong with 1964?
If I was 18 in 1964 not only would I have done my shopping in a grocers rather than a supermarket, I could look forward to a lifetime of more or less continuous employment, radical politics back when it really did seem that we could change the world, and had sex drugs and rock and roll galore (remember Sex began in 1963 – too late for Philip Larkin and perhaps too early for me…) all followed by early-ish retirement on a proper occupational pension.
And if I was really lucky I’d have died just before we entered this catastrophic decade when everything that made life at least semi-tolerable is being systematically destroyed.
Ce la vie….
Another Roger 12.03.10 at 1:12 pm
#8 Thanks to the EU and the free movement of Labour there will always be someone for whom emptying bins in London will always be more remunerative than teaching or doctoring in Ankara or Kiev (or wherever our neo-colonial frontier extends itself to)
And their cheap lager will probably follow them.
EB 12.03.10 at 2:06 pm
There will always be jobs — many of them — that seem shitty to academics. My relatives hold quite a few of them. We can struggle to decrease the proportion of jobs that seem shitty to you folks; I’m all for that. But in the meantime, the issue is whether these jobs pay enough to live on, and whether there are enough of these jobs to go around. In other words, income transfer is a part of the picture but a much bigger part is compressing the wage scale, which will not come about thru “soak the rich” rhetoric. Another big part is getting the economy going again. If you’ve given up on people having jobs, then say so. Many of us have not, and will not, because accepting life on the dole for a large section of people (not you or your family, of course) is just condescending.
aubergine 12.03.10 at 2:07 pm
Malnutrition, depression, class, warfare, and bad luck are well known motivators of young children. Mr. Field must know that a tornado is going to ground somewhere in Kansas, and by faith in the state alone, poor children will be transported to a fantasy land where none of them suffer, because a wizard waits there to lend a compassionate hand.
“Meanwhile, back in merry old England Mr. Field and Mr. Dickens will hold classes in pick pocketing, shell games, thieving, a the proper way to beg. In January, their new book, “How to Live On One Shilling A Day,” will be made available to their students for the special price of only fifteen pounds each. Start applying your street skills now urchins, there are only thirty days before classes begin.”
Omega Centauri 12.03.10 at 2:53 pm
I was thinking of a more ominous interpretation. The basic complaint is it is hard to help the poor up, because they have poor genetics, and their parents have poor teaching skills. The cure is to ensure that enough adults with good genetics, and teaching skills become poor so as to dilute the effect.
StevenAttewell 12.03.10 at 3:15 pm
You know, it’s really starting to feel like we’ve regressed into the Victorian period; Samuel Smiles as the model for social policy, economic inequality and depression combined with the resolute belief that steps to prevent those things from happening are not merely impossible but somehow a breach of the natural order, and the stunning popularity of abstinent vampire novels.
CharlieMcMenamin 12.03.10 at 3:28 pm
Not vampires, but Zombies are the sign of the Zeitgeist according to one Marxist blogger and I think his description of why fits rather well with Field’s attitude to the poor:
“Zombies as a horror staple are the result of some unfathomable biological or supernatural crisis that cannot be reversed. They are mindless. They are faceless. They are ugly. And they want to invade your home and feast on your flesh. If this does not work as an allegory for bourgeois attitudes to and fears of the working class, I don’t know what does.”
chris y 12.03.10 at 3:29 pm
Another Roger, I was 13 in 1964. the quality and choice of the food available in grocers at that time is familiar to me, and isn’t something I’m anxious to revisit. Central heating was fairly uncommon in Britain- most people aspired to night storage heaters at the most- it was cold. Before you went to work or school, you could go out to the coal shed in the snow and carry in a load of coke, then you could rake out the ashes in the stove that heated the boiler and fuel it up, and in due course you’d get some hot water to wash in. Happy times.
The telly was black and white, and Ready, Steady, Go was not as good as you’ve been told. And if you were old enough to drink, the pub had a sign on the door saying, “No Dogs, Blacks or Irish”. Carry me back.
ptl 12.03.10 at 4:01 pm
Another Roger, I was 18 in 1964. I went to university then. Only 4 pupils from my girls’ grammar school did, that’s 4 from a school population of one grammar school plus two secondary moderns. The boys’ ratio was better, of course. But at least I wasn’t gay and so far as I know, none of the boys was (it was gaol for gays then). And at least I didn’t get pregnant and have to get a back street abortion, but, a lot of women did. (And yes, black people were refused lodgings and so on with impunity.)
And even for white heterosexual men, yes, it was night storage heaters at best and coal sheds and so on.
I have a feeling you don’t know much about occupational pensions, but perhaps you do.
Walt 12.03.10 at 4:01 pm
If it kept you out of pubs at 13, chris, then it was worth it.
Lemuel Pitkin 12.03.10 at 4:22 pm
18-
Fascinating. I had almost the exact same reaction to The Walking Dead. Gratifying to see that two Marxists come away from the show with such a similar analysis. Maybe there’s something to this scientific socialism business after all!
StevenAttewell 12.03.10 at 4:30 pm
CharlieMcMenamin – fair enough, but overdrawn. Protagonists in zombie movies are quite often working class folks, with the bourgeois ethic of consumption and wealth acquisition called into question in an apocalyptic situation. More the ethic of Bunyan than Bentham.
But the vampire/abstinence thing is important for the neo-Victorianism, because we can’t leave out the Christian repression from the neoliberalism.
someguy 12.03.10 at 4:31 pm
Chris Bertram,
The specifics of what the Frank Field guy was proposing seemed questionable.
But certainly no one disagress in principle that by
‘ensuring that poorer children in the future have the range of abilities necessary to secure better paid, higher skilled jobs.’
we can change the distribution of income .
Right? The ensuring part is really hard but certainly if we do it we change the distribution of income. Right?
Lemuel Pitkin 12.03.10 at 4:38 pm
Wrong.
StevenAttewell 12.03.10 at 4:42 pm
Someguy –
It’s not the principle that’s wrong, it’s the relation of principle to reality. What people who disagree with Field point to are a couple of points:
1. Material inequality has a strong knock-on effect on equality of opportunity. This is ridiculously evident from the research, and proposing to ignore it just makes your task that much harder.
2. Material inequality is actually a problem in its self; i.e, it matters whether parents have enough money to pay for healthy food, decent housing, etc etc etc. You can’t just handwave these things away and say “lack of money isn’t important compared to culture.”
3. It completely ignores the vitally important question – are there enough living wage jobs/labor demand to absorb these poor children of the future, even if we give all of them the skills they need? It completely focuses on academic education as the single silver bullet to the exclusion of say, employment, investment in industry, technical and vocational training, etc etc.
http://realignmentproject.wordpress.com/2010/11/15/putting-it-back-on-the-agenda-poverty/
http://realignmentproject.wordpress.com/2010/07/03/new-deal-for-california-part-3-educate-and-punish/
http://realignmentproject.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/beyond-eep-vs-broader-bolder-the-problem-with-education-reform/
dsquared 12.03.10 at 4:47 pm
#9 to #24.
StevenAttewell 12.03.10 at 4:49 pm
dsquared – rather reminds me of this Angry Flower cartoon:
http://www.angryflower.com/atlass.gif
A slightly different note, but a continual lemma on the neoliberal side.
chris y 12.03.10 at 4:54 pm
27. Ah, who does the dirty jobs under socialism? Yes, I remember that one.
someguy 12.03.10 at 5:01 pm
dsquared ,
I am pretty sure sanitation workers would just make more money.
[Actually they would probably just be imported.]
The more important benefit would be how much closer we would get to robot garbage men etc.
StevenAttewell 12.03.10 at 5:02 pm
Chris – really paid workers, actually. Seriously, go to the DDR museum in Berlin; they have charts which show garbage men and sewage workers getting paid like doctors.
dsquared 12.03.10 at 5:08 pm
I am pretty sure sanitation workers would just make more money
Tell me more about this “pay sanitation workers more money” scheme of yours, I think it might offer some clues toward a more direct route to solve the problems of poverty than this rather roundabout stuff about government-sponsored parenting websites.
Lemuel Pitkin 12.03.10 at 5:10 pm
Ah, who does the dirty jobs under socialism?
No, it doesn’t go that far.
The point is that production today is organized on the basis of a large number of repetitive jobs involving little decision-making and no creativity, a smaller number of supervisors and decision-makers, and anotehr small group doing the creative intellectual tasks. Changing the distribution of “skills” doesn’t in itself do anything to change this structure of production and the distribution of social power — and therefore compensation — that goes with it.
It’s perfectly possible that cars could be manufactured by teams of workers each of which would engage in a wide range of tasks and all of whom would participate in some fashion in the design and in decisions about how much and what to produce, instead of by unskilled assembly-line workers with the design work and decision-making limited to a few specialists and managers. But you’d have to actually reorganize the production process — as under socialism — not just provide a better education to the people on the assembly line. Which is especially challenging because under capitalism, it’s not enough that the cars get produced, they have to do it in a way that allows the owners to extract a surplus from the process. Which means that the workers have to be replaceable and interchangeable, whether or not there’s any technical reason for it or not.
If anything, someguy has it exactly backwards. Raise wages — and the status of working people in general — first, and the unskilled jobs will go away on their own.
CharlieMcMenamin 12.03.10 at 5:12 pm
StevenAttewell – it may seems a waste of a Friday afternoon to stretch overblown analogies to the point of stupidity.
But – hey! – I like wasting Friday afternoons, so let me just argue the toss on this vampire/zombie thing a while:
1. Heroes (non zombies) may well often be working class, but they’re the ‘respectable’ working class, aren’t they? Surrounded by a sea of half-dead, mindless, would-be consumers of their brains….so I can see the Bunyan analogy working here; the hero non zombies are certain ‘the Elect’ and have to fight to stay that way
2. Vampires are not often shown as operating in packs; they’re more often (initially portrayed as) seductive individuals with great charm and refinement. Part of the traditional arc of a vampire story is the predictable shock when it proves that such a cultured individual wants to steal your virginity/lifeblood and turn you into something horrible like himself. I think they’re more like Venture Capitalists (or at least the cartoon version shown on Dragon’s Den) in this respect.
I have to admit that I’m not sure where the current fad for celibate vampires comes in to this account though. Perhaps the disappearance of socialism now means that no-one can even think that Venture Capitalist might be bad for you?
ajay 12.03.10 at 5:16 pm
Raise wages—and the status of working people in general—first, and the unskilled jobs will go away on their own.
This might be a bit rough on the unskilled people.
Lemuel Pitkin 12.03.10 at 5:21 pm
This might be a bit rough on the unskilled people.
The assumption that people who are currently cleaning toilets, working cash registers, etc. are inherently incapable of doing anything more rewarding, is precisely what’s under dispute.
elm 12.03.10 at 5:23 pm
Am I to assume that guillotine construction and operation are among “the range of abilities necessary to secure better paid, higher skilled jobs”?
StevenAttewell 12.03.10 at 5:26 pm
Charlie – hey, I’m whiling away the hours while scanning documents at the National Archives. I’ve got nothing but time.
Actually, zombie protagonists are usually the disreputable working class – think Shaun of the Dead, or Talahasee in Zombieworld. And that’s leaving aside the whole Romero oevre.
Regarding the vampires – you have a point there (Although somewhat limited; Dracula has his brides, Lestat et al have their weird ersatz families, things like Vampire the Masquerade or Underworld imagine an incredibly intricate social world, with Vampires universally portrayed as the ultimate louche aristo).
As for the celibacy, I think that’s always been a part of it – from Dracula on, there’s plenty of penetration-without-penetration; the Brides are there to show off bodices but no more, the neck-biting remains at the level of the Hollywood-kiss-clench, etc. It’s a way to think/talk about sex without actually talking about it.
LFC 12.03.10 at 6:02 pm
who does the dirty jobs under socialism?
see under:
Fourier, Charles
(I’m joking, don’t get all bothered…)
someguy 12.03.10 at 6:04 pm
dsquared,
The waiting list is 22K people long to become a sanitation worker.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dsny/html/pr2007/20507.shtml
If you include benefits a sanitation probably makes more money than me.
After 20 years your salary is probably 90k. At retirement you get 50% of your last year or 3 wages for life. You jack up that pay with OT. You are talking about 45K at least for life after 20 years. 1.3 million dollar pay out.
So I don’t want to give santiation workers any more money.
You can pay single parents whatever you want. I think we can and should do more in regards to that.
But at the end of the day without a second parent, without an education, without a change in culture you will be left with a cycle of poverty. You won’t get equality of oppurtunity you will get stratified system with a permanent under class which has a bit more coin in it’s pocket or free time.
Dan 12.03.10 at 6:05 pm
@charlie (34): is that an intentional reference to Charles Stross’ abandoned “vampires as venture capitalists” book, or just a happy coincidence? http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/10/books-i-will-not-write-6-halti.html
CharlieMcMenamin 12.03.10 at 6:10 pm
Someguy,
Not sure where you get that 90K from. You link to a page which says this:
“The annual starting salary for Sanitation Worker is $26,000. Upon completion of 6 months of employment, the salary will rise to $30,811. After 5 1/2 years, it increases to $57,392. The job has excellent medical benefits; retirement after 20 years with half – pay; 11 paid holidays; 18 paid vacation days increasing to 25 days after five years; and great promotional advancement opportunities. Some of the tasks performed by Sanitation Workers include operating various types of heavy- duty equipment involved in street cleaning, waste and recycling collection, snow removal, and waste disposal.
CharlieMcMenamin 12.03.10 at 6:17 pm
#41- Dan, if I’ve knowingly copied an idea I do try to credit it. ( as I did with AVPS in #18). I’m not an academic so this isn’t a point of professional principle for me, just my understanding of how ‘netiquette’ works.
But I forget: sometimes I forget where I’ve seen an idea in the first place, or I just forget whether I’ve seen an idea in the first place as opposed to simply thinking it up myself. So all I can say is that I can’t recall going to Charlie Stross’ page but am really happy to accept that I did somehow subliminally pick up the idea from him.
StevenAttewell 12.03.10 at 6:22 pm
Someguy – again, if you’ve got a second parent, an education, and all the bourgeois values you want and there syill aren’t enough jobs that pay a living wage, you’re still going to be poor.
You’ll be the kind of moral hardworking poor person that plucks the heartstrings of the rich, see Donner Party Conservativism, but you’ll still be poor.
What’s baffling about this is that we knew this back in the 1890’s-00s. We tried the whole uplift strategy and it didn’t work. And then middle class reformers actually looked at how the labor market worked.
Why go backwards?
StevenAttewell 12.03.10 at 6:24 pm
* still, not syll.
someguy 12.03.10 at 6:30 pm
CharlieMcMenamin,
I took 1.03 to the 14 and multipled 57. by that number.
Looking a little further it looks like I might be slightly off.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_does_a_New_York_Department_of_Sanitation_worker_make
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/nyregion/18garbage.html
With OT and differentials 90k is probably close but if you want to say 80K I wouldn’t quibble.
Looks like Seattle is really the place for santitation work.
http://www.divinecaroline.com/22276/98551-needs-phd-four-jobs-pay.
So my bad 40K for for 30 years is 1.2 million dollars not 1.3 million dollars.
mpowell 12.03.10 at 6:31 pm
As for the celibacy, I think that’s always been a part of it – from Dracula on, there’s plenty of penetration-without-penetration; the Brides are there to show off bodices but no more, the neck-biting remains at the level of the Hollywood-kiss-clench, etc. It’s a way to think/talk about sex without actually talking about it.
I haven’t watched these old vampire movies, so I don’t know, but I don’t think you’re proving the point you intend. My understanding is that with Dracula, that’s as close as you can get to portraying sex in that era. Today if you want to portray sex, your characters have sex. That’s the difference between Twilight and True Blood. With Twilight you know they don’t have sex- it’s a major plot point. With Dracula, it was left to adults to infer that yes, they were having sex. Of course True Blood argues against the claim that we are seeing a wave of abstinent vampires.
someguy 12.03.10 at 6:43 pm
StevenAttewell,
I don’t know about in GB but in the US all the jobs pay a living scale wage. Obesity is the problem for low end job workers.
If you have a degree and bourgeois values
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States
you make 52K. Which isn’t poor.
On the other hand if you are single parent with some high school and 2 kids. You make
20K and are 2800 dollars above the Census Bureau’s poverty level. And your kids are going to end up the same way or in jail.
StevenAttewell 12.03.10 at 6:58 pm
Someguy – “in the US all the jobs pay a living scale wage”? Are you kidding me? Newsflash: there are 10 million working age people in the U.S today who are working and below the poverty line – these people have spouses and kids; even in households with a full-time working member, 28% of children are low income. 21% of all families with children (http://nccp.org/publications/pdf/text_958.pdf) are food-insecure.
And anyone, no matter how educated or values-friendly, can find themselves unemployed and thrown into poverty.
Poverty is not reserved to the non-working single parents.
CharlieMcMenamin 12.03.10 at 7:23 pm
Someguy: I’m a Brit so I don’t really understand how these things work over on your side of the pond but over here all local (and central govt) posts have a salary scale with a cut off point beyond which you do not progress unless you get promoted. So your maths doesn’t hold up to my way of thinking as the NYT piece you linked to referred to a new deal with a salary cap of $67K, but perhaps there is something specifically American I’m not getting.
Yes, overtime can boost this figure – but you’re not comparing like with like if you include overtime.
P.S. Wiki Answers as a source? I don’t think so…
StevenAttewell 12.03.10 at 7:23 pm
mpowell – true, but it’s a bit clearer in the book. The scene where Dracula keeps his brides from consummating with Johnathan Harker, the descriptions of how the vampire actually feeds and lives – it’s all in the fangs, not below the waist.
mw 12.03.10 at 7:55 pm
Actually I’ve spotted a flaw in this one. If the poorer members of society are all going to get higher-skilled and better paid jobs, then isn’t the rubbish going to rather pile up after a while?
Do you really have gangs of poor people picking up your trash? Around here it’s a person driving an automated truck (heated, air-conditioned, and presumably iPod-equipped) that plucks all the bin off the curb with a robotic arm. Moving ever more people out of low-value, low-skill, low-paid jobs certainly looks doable to me. There’s no reason why rubbish has to be handled by lots of low-skilled workers (as opposed to a small number of workers designing, building, operating and maintaining sophisticated equipment).
someguy 12.03.10 at 7:58 pm
CharlieMcMenamin,
Why not? Many professional jobs don’t include OT or shift differentials? So for me it seems like to like.
StevenAttewell,
College educated US workers do just dandy in the US.
In my example the single parent worked and made 20k. That is median for some high school. So I don’t know where you got the idea that I was claiming that poverty is reserved for non working single parents.
Two parents, two kids, two college degrees, family with bougie values. In the median dual income situation they make 104K a year. They are fine. Historically and globally they are way better than fine.
Some high school one parent two kids = 2oK per year and barely above the poverty line, 17.2 K, and the kids are trapped in a cycle of poverty.
Give the kids a dad with high school degree and they make 52K. Same as a one income college degree family. Give the family bougie values and they are fine. The kids will get an education. The cycle will be broken.
Give the mom an extra 5K or 7K no dad and no bougie values and you still have the cycle the only difference is they have a little extra pocket money or mom has more time to spend with the kids. And I think that is great but it doesn’t end the cycle.
NomadUK 12.03.10 at 8:02 pm
Am I to assume that guillotine construction and operation are among “the range of abilities necessary to secure better paid, higher skilled jobs�
We can only hope.
Phil Ruse 12.03.10 at 8:02 pm
Sorry to digress, but don’t you think “ConDem” is the political equivalent of hitting the “snooze” button. Unless of course you’re only talking to people who already share your point of view, in which case what’s the point? Sorry, rant over…
someguy 12.03.10 at 8:02 pm
CharlieMcMenamin,
‘P.S. Wiki Answers as a source? I don’t think so…’
The NY Times article was from 2007. At a little more than a 2% a year you get 70K in two years. So I think the wiki answer blurb is right. Plus it pretty much backs up everything else I read. In isolation it might be an issue.
StevenAttewell 12.03.10 at 8:07 pm
You’re still dancing around the labor demand issue – college educated folks do well because they only make up 30% of the adult population. So if we’re going to turn college into our only mechanism for preventing poverty – what do we do about the other 70%? Abandon them to their fate because they don’t have a college degree?
At the same time, giving the mom an extra $5-7k makes a huge difference! It could be the difference between getting evicted or paying the rent, or eating twice a day and eating three square meals, or having no money for books and having money for tutors. All these things take money, and it all matters.
roac 12.03.10 at 8:16 pm
A thought experiment for someguy:
Suppose combination of enlightened public policy and divine intervention instills “bougie values” in everyone in the country (US) not already in possession of same.
Subsequent to that event, who makes the beds in hotels? And how much do those people get paid?
someguy 12.03.10 at 8:32 pm
StevenAttewell,
“You’re still dancing around the labor demand issue – college educated folks do well because they only make up 30% of the adult population.”
Lump of labor. Immigration.
“So if we’re going to turn college into our only mechanism for preventing poverty – what do we do about the other 70%? Abandon them to their fate because they don’t have a college degree?”
No. I have repeatedly said that I favor income redistribution and I think it is great.
The issue isn’t that I think that our only mechanism for preventing poverty should be education, the issue is that you think income redistribution is the only way to alleviate poverty, and that values, two parents, and education don’t matter. They matter more.
roac,
“Subsequent to that event, who makes the beds in hotels? And how much do those people get paid?”
People who want to make more money and more money than people who don’t. Immigration.
LFC 12.03.10 at 8:42 pm
mw @52:
No robotic-arm trash pick-up where I live. Which is not to say it’s like coal mining in 19th century France or 21st century China.
StevenAttewell 12.03.10 at 8:58 pm
Lump of labor my eye – it’s labor demand. This is an empirical question; does demand for college educated labor exist or likely to exist in the future sufficient to educate a higher number of college-educated workers? If so, great. If not, then education is not sufficient for dealing with poverty.
“No. I have repeatedly said that I favor income redistribution and I think it is great.”
Wow. That really doesn’t pop out in your comments in this thread. But then again, apparently no one works in poverty according to you.
As regard to what I believe, I think that we should put as much effort and energy into ensuring that there are enough living wage jobs to employ people – that’s not state redistribution per se (it could also involve a more even division of profits between workers and management, for example). Once we have that foundation in place – once it’s actually possible for everyone to get a living-wage income – then by all means let’s do education and culture. That helps, it’s important.
But – and this is important – it is not sufficient on its own. Educating people and trying to acculturate them without paying attention to the realities of the labor market is exactly the approach that has failed time and time again. It didn’t work in the Victorian Era, it didn’t work in the War on Poverty, it won’t work now.
Pascal Leduc 12.03.10 at 8:59 pm
someguy, your idea is interesting but why stop at just a couple?
afterall a polygamous group would have even more parents with which to aggregate its income, a family of 48 with a child would make just short of a million dollars, a family of a thousand would make twenty million!
And the great thing with such a plan is that love has nothing to do with it, the savings come entirely from forcing people to share living space and income. Obviously the ultimate solution is to put every single human being in the UK in the same flat, maybe even the same apartment, the individual rent cost for all of us would be minuscule.
Cryptic Ned 12.03.10 at 9:21 pm
Sorry to digress, but don’t you think “ConDem†is the political equivalent of hitting the “snooze†button. Unless of course you’re only talking to people who already share your point of view, in which case what’s the point? Sorry, rant over…
I don’t see the source of offence here. Is there a more neutral way to abbreviate “Conservative / Liberal Democrat” than “ConDem”?
zamfir 12.03.10 at 9:22 pm
How can I tell whether I have enough bourgeois values? I’ve got the parents and the education, but the values are a bit vague, imo. Is it just that I should look to my income and what is left after accounting for parents and education is because of good values? Because I suspect I don’t have much of them in that case.
Also, if I have not enough values, can I still give values to my kids?
roac 12.03.10 at 9:23 pm
Regarding the robot arm, I was home Friday and watched the recycle guys pick up. The stuff goes in the standard Supercan, which is designed to be picked up and dumped by a hydraulic lift. The workers weren’t using the lift — they were picking up the containers and dumping them manually. (Not sure this would be possible with the non-recyclable trash which is heavier.)
The practice in most places that the guys on the trucks get paid for an eight-hour day, but they get to go home when they have finished the route. Typically if they hustle, it takes about six and a half hours. So they do in fact hustle — watch a crew some time. Hand-dumping is faster.
(The rationale for the universal adoption of Supercans was to cut down on workers’ comp claims by doing the lifting mechanically.)
CharlieMcMenamin 12.03.10 at 9:28 pm
Awwwh, c’mon someguy: I think only someone who has never worked overtime could possibly think it is fair to compare wages between jobs where overtime has to be worked to attract a certain salary and those where it doesn’t.
On the whole bourgeois values thing I refer you to Rab and his summary of Goldthorpe’s view of how working class families approach educational decisions.
someguy 12.03.10 at 10:01 pm
StevenAttewell,
I say
“You can pay single parents whatever you want. I think we can and should do more in regards to that.”
“Give the mom an extra 5K or 7K no dad and no bougie values and you still have the cycle the only difference is they have a little extra pocket money or mom has more time to spend with the kids. And I think that is great but it doesn’t end the cycle.”
“On the other hand if you are single parent with some high school and 2 kids. You make
20K and are 2800 dollars above the Census Bureau’s poverty level.”
“Some high school one parent two kids = 2oK per year and barely above the poverty line, 17.2 K, and the kids are trapped in a cycle of poverty.”
and than
“I have repeatedly said that I favor income redistribution and I think it is great.â€
Me – I think we should give more to single parents.
Me – I think giving 5K or 7K extra to single mom is great but it doesn’t break the cycle of poverty.
Me – Single parent with no high school 2 kids median income is barely above poverty line.
Me – Again -single parent with no high school 2 kids median income is barely above poverty line.
Me – I favor income redistribution. See above where I said it was great.
In response you say
“Wow. That really doesn’t pop out in your comments in this thread. But then again, apparently no one works in poverty according to you.”
Shorter version
someguy – I believe X.
StevenAttewell – someguy believes Y.
someguy – I believe X.
StevenAttewell – someguy believes Y.
someguy – I believe X. That is why I keep saying I believe X.
StevenAttewell – someguy from your comments I never would have guessed you believe X. You believe Y.
Me – Discussion with you seems pointless. That is too bad because I like a good discussion.
someguy 12.03.10 at 10:06 pm
CharlieMcMenamin ,
“Awwwh, c’mon someguy: I think only someone who has never worked overtime could possibly think it is fair to compare wages between jobs where overtime has to be worked to attract a certain salary and those where it doesn’t.”
A professional work week is generally 50 hours and you don’t get 5 weeks paid vacation and Martin Luther King day off and release night work doesn’t earn you a shift differential.
At 50 hours a week 70K becomes 95K. OT is sweet.
someguy 12.03.10 at 10:08 pm
zamfir,
“Also, if I have not enough values, can I still give values to my kids?”
Not sure. I certainly hope so. I will let you know in 20 years.
someguy 12.03.10 at 10:18 pm
CharlieMcMenamin ,
“On the whole bourgeois values thing I refer you to Rab and his summary of Goldthorpe’s view of how working class families approach educational decisions.”
That was odd. Rabelais went from they fail because of a lack of social-cultural capital to inequality is the problem without even seeming to notice the incongruity.
Gene O'Grady 12.03.10 at 10:51 pm
You know, someguy, I’m familiar with public sector workers in Oregon who routinely work uncompensated overtime and thanks to dear Ted Kulongoski are working extra uncompensated overtime so they don’t get too far behind because of their unpaid furlow days.
On the other hand, I’ve been a flunky in Fortune 500 corporate headquarters and seen first hand the amount of personal stuff that somehow gets counted in those 50 and 60 hour weeks. Not to mention the tax free perks.
So broaden your real world experience and then come back and comment.
James Kroeger 12.03.10 at 11:05 pm
StevenAttewell, 61:
As regard to what I believe, I think that we should put as much effort and energy into ensuring that there are enough living wage jobs to employ people…Once we have that foundation in place – once it’s actually possible for everyone to get a living-wage income – then by all means let’s do education and culture…But – and this is important – it is not sufficient on its own. Educating people and trying to acculturate them without paying attention to the realities of the labor market is exactly the approach that has failed time and time again…
This really is the essential truth that ‘leftist intellectuals’ need to focus on. There is nothing that society could do for the underprivileged that would be more kind, more helpful, or more generous than simply giving them a labor market where there are always more jobs available than there are people to fill them.
It is something that could easily be achieved by any government that is willing to increase its spending levels sufficiently. If the spending increases were dedicated solely to infrastructure projects and investments in human capital [health and education], then it would be impossible to rationally criticize such an agenda on economic grounds.
A commitment to this goal [creating and maintaining a chronic labor shortage] would make it possible to completely eliminate the dole for all able-bodied and able-minded citizens. No more ‘giveaways’ to people for nothing. (exception: the disabled) Need money? Here’s a job. This agenda would not provide poorer folks with [specific]-job-security, but it would provide them with employment/income security.
In an economy that features a chronic labor shortage, wages would be driven up by employers competing with each other for the employees they need. No need for minimum-wage legislation. Use the marketplace and competition to improve the lot of the underclass.
The common objections we normally hear from right-wing critics would be essentially silenced. They wouldn’t be able to complain about laziness; they wouldn’t be able to complain about the wastefulness of anti-poverty programs; they wouldn’t be able to complain that the extra spending is somehow hurting the economy, since all the extra spending would be on true economic investments that increase the economy’s productivity.
Yes, they would complain about taxes and their fears re: inflation, but these familiar fears are of imagined bogeymen and not any actually existing threats to the welfare of rich people. With an enlightened understanding of economic realities, it should be possible to win them over to an agenda that actually serves their interests optimally.
Rabelais 12.04.10 at 12:38 am
Someguy,
‘Rabelais went from they fail because of a lack of social-cultural capital to inequality is the problem without even seeming to notice the incongruity.’
Did I?
I thought the point I was making was that there is very little that is attractive about a higher education if you’re working class. And university is even less attractive if it’s going to land you in massive amounts of debt.
Goldthorpe’s article is thought provoking but I’m not persuaded that his attention to inequality fully accounts for working class disinterest in HE. I suspect that there are cultural reasons why many working class kids don’t seeing HE as an option. And I suppose of you push me on it, I don’t think that there is anything incongruous about the combination of inequality and ‘low’ cultural capital deterring young people from university.
StevenAttewell 12.04.10 at 1:28 am
someguy – I could say the exact same thing about you, man.
You – “in the US all the jobs pay a living scale wage. Obesity is the problem for low end job workers.” If you have a degree and bourgeois values, you’ll be fine. If you’re a single parent who only went to high school, you’ll be poor. (Which rather ignores the fact that many middle class folks can become poor via losing their jobs, their retirement, or through a major illness), but whatever.
Me – Actually, millions of people are working poor, and millions more are food-insecure.
You – completely ignore the refutation of your first comment. “I don’t know where you got the idea that I was claiming that poverty is reserved for non working single parents.” “Give the family bougie values and they are fine. The kids will get an education. The cycle will be broken. Give the mom an extra 5K or 7K no dad and no bougie values and you still have the cycle ” (This doesn’t exactly scream that redistribution is an acceptable route)
Me – College folks do well in part because there’s a limited supply of them relative to demand. Is there enough demand to hire the newly-educated poor if “‘ensuring that poorer children in the future have the range of abilities necessary to secure better paid, higher skilled jobs” becomes our major policy lever on policy, as Field is calling for? And by the way, giving poor people money is important, because material constraints affect their ability to be upwardly mobile.
You – Lump of labor. Immigration. (total non sequitur) “values, two parents, and education…matter more [than money]”
Me – I’m not arguing from lump of labor, I’m asking whether or not there’s enough labor demand to employ all the poor people if we give them “values, two parents and education.”
You – you’re not being responsive! Money is fine!
So allow me to summarize my position:
1. Material inequality is ultimately more important than culture, because even poor families with said culture are still poor.
2. Putting all of our eggs into the education basket is not a good idea, because it’s not clear that we actually have enough jobs for educated workers to absorb 100% of the kids. If we’re not going to try for 100%, we need to do something about those left out – like give them good jobs (this is apart from redistribution, btw).
someguy 12.04.10 at 1:32 am
Gene O’Grady,
I am sure times are tough for a lot of state workers now. Times are tough for a lot of people right now.
I have had all kinds of jobs. Including a job working on a state contract installing stuff for state workers. I also worked the previous census. So I have gotten to spend a decent amount of time around govt work and workers. It is 9-5 work at most.
I think most everyone knows a state worker or has seen it up close. We know a lot of it is 9-4 or 3 work. [Of course there are some exceptions.]
I have worked for fortune 100 company for years. Just down the street from some friends who worked for a fortune 500 company. For most a standard day is between 9 and 10 hours. Does a lot of personal stuff get counted? Heck yea. I knew a guy who went to the movies + lunch every Friday. But that stuff happens at the state as well.
Defined task state jobs are the best. Postal work 6 hours and out. See above for garbage collection. At the census you were told a full day = x amount collected and don’t worry about how many hours you worked. I worked 4 and charged 8. That was expected.
bobbyp 12.04.10 at 3:29 am
“So allow me to summarize my position:”
OK. Here’s mine: A much, much bigger piece of the pie to the currently ‘not rich’. Simple. Effective. No fancy qualifiers. No pretense that it is something other than it is. No BS.
GrueBleen 12.04.10 at 4:24 am
ajay @3
We may be both Australian and working class, but at least we’re all foreman material !
John Quiggin 12.04.10 at 4:41 am
We working class Australians get confused by terms like “Public School”.
john b 12.04.10 at 5:42 am
This Bob cartoon sees even more relevant: http://www.angryflower.com/oureco.html
Salient 12.04.10 at 6:37 am
is that an intentional reference to Charles Stross’ abandoned “vampires as venture capitalists†book
Eh, Stross can’t (and surely doesn’t) take original credit for that idea, it’s been done, as anyone who instinctively thinks ‘ten-sided die’ when they hear ‘white wolf’ can attest.
Amusingly, in that game, one does not suffer any particular loss to “Humanity” score for being/becoming an undead vampire, but the venture capitalist type vampires effectively suffer a -2.
Today if you want to portray sex, your characters have sex.
…well, not in adolescent / YA fiction they don’t, presumably, unless one’s name is Tamora Pierce. (And even in the Alanna series, the sex was awfully circumspect.)
Zora 12.04.10 at 8:15 am
Celibate vampire trope doesn’t start with Twilight. It starts with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and her doomed romance with Angel, the handsome, brooding, GOOD vampire with a soul. He loves Buffy, but if he boinks her, he loses his soul and becomes a baddie again. Twilight merely tweaks the trope.
Another Roger 12.04.10 at 11:33 am
Of course I wasn’t being altogether serious about wishing that I’d been 18 in 1964…
But assuming that they were white and middle class (and lets be honest – how many of you commenting here are neither?) the boomers did and are having it pretty good…
Is this a substantive political point?
I would say so in as far as boomers do continue to go on about how wonderful they were – and that there are real generational effects in politics that the Left does underestimate.
Those boomers who are retiring on a full final salary pension (and yes having done quite a bit of research in this field I do know that statistically this does not mean the whole 1945-55 cohort – but does nevertheless represent a very significant segment of them…) actually do represent a rather important addition to the rentier class.
But has anyone seriously thought through the political implications of this?
Barry 12.04.10 at 6:50 pm
John Quiggin 12.04.10 at 4:41 am
” We working class Australians get confused by terms like “Public Schoolâ€.”
Just remember this mnemonic: rum, sodomy and the lash.
StevenAttewell 12.04.10 at 9:11 pm
bobbyp – I’m in agreement with you; I happen to think that it’s more politically likely to happen, and more affordable overall, if we combine (and partly accomplish) redistribution with a jobs guarantee.
http://realignmentproject.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/job-insurance-labor-market-power-for-the-majority-plus-a-review-of-the-jobs-bill/
http://realignmentproject.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/job-insurance-solving-for-inflation/
Tim Worstall 12.05.10 at 4:03 pm
“†We working class Australians get confused by terms like “Public Schoolâ€.â€
Just remember this mnemonic: rum, sodomy and the lash.”
Sadly that’s the Royal Navy.
Public schools can be similar but usually lack the rum (which is why I was caught brewing beer in the attics of the public school my RN father sent me to).
Barry 12.05.10 at 6:26 pm
“Sadly that’s the Royal Navy.”
OK, cold tea, sodomy and the lash – or to be more precise, the cane :)
Comments on this entry are closed.