Calm down, dears

“The coalition can’t miss this once-in-a-generation chance to destroy the welfare state”

“Because the government’s faux-regretful gouges at the post-war social contract don’t just hurt women.”

Just…. wow. All that was the post-war social contract was it? If so, how come it has been growing continuously since the war? Reducing it to something like… well, not so much reducing it as stopping it growing so fast, really … cannot be described as “gouging the post-war social contract”, or “destroy[ing] the welfare state”.

That’s just about the silliest post I have read here.

Actually they did cock up the forced marriages ban, through trying to implement it via a measure that attacked the article 8 rights of people under 21.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15272121

To be fair, though, this was a NuLab policy, enthusiastically adopted by the coalition.

But the UK equivalent of the American soccer mom is deserting the coalition government in droves, and she must be won back.

This doesn’t actually seem to be true.

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/2867/Conservative-support-among-women.aspx

“Articles in the Observer ( 2 October 2011) and Guardian (3 October 2011), quoting Ipsos MORI data on women’s voting intentions and attitudes to the Conservatives, have a number of errors…We find women’s support for the Conservatives over the course of 2011 at 35%, compared to 36% in the general election, down one percentage point. Over the same period, Conservative support among men has fallen from 38% to 35%, a three-point fall…there is now no substantial difference between the voting intentions of men and women as a whole.”

They go on, however, to say that “we have found that the government performs worse among women than among men on a number of other measurements of political attitudes” – no details yet.

Breakdown of changes in support for the Conservatives shows that the people who have been leaving in droves since the general election are young and youngish men – 18-24 and 25-34 – and
young women – 18-24 only. There are really significant drops in those demographics.

The “soccer mom” age groups, however, have most definitely not been leaving the Conservatives. Tory support is up among 25-34 women and static in 35-54 women.

“Spend bazillions on our buddies’ flagship ‘free schools’ in west London to show we really care about the kids”

I assume that’s Toby Young’s thing. Which appears to be cheaper in capital costs than a standard new state school.

Which appears to be cheaper in capital costs than a standard new state school.

That’s because it isn’t a new school, in the sense of a new building dedicated to education. The London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, which is currently controlled by Tories, just *gave* Toby the use of a building when it looked like he wouldn’t make it to the start line in September, kicking a variety of inoffensive community organisations that had been based in it for years out onto the kerb.

It is very easy to have lower CAPEX if your ideological pals just *give* you chunks of state property in order to spare their party an embarrassing fiasco.

Meanwhile, what I want to know is what happened between the 14th December 2010 and the 1st February 2011. If you look at the chart, the Tory lead among women transitions from its previous range, between 5 and 10 percentage points higher than men, down to a new one hardly any different…and the change is accomplished entirely within this period of time. It’s a regime-change in the original, pre-Rumsfeld sense of the term.

I’m struggling to tie this to a political event of some description.

The other interesting observation is that the two series used to be inversely correlated but since May 2011 they have become correlated.

Not sure about your correlation point Alex, I think I’d want to see the numbers. But you’re right about the disappearance of the Conservative lead among women.
Combine that with the IPSOS thing I linked to, and I think you can be fairly sure that whatever it was happened among young women because that’s the main bit of their female base that has disappeared. What did the Tories do in late 2010 that could have annoyed a lot of young women? Is there a tuition fees issue?

the average cost of establishing a new secondary school under the last government’s Building Schools for the Future programme was, on average, twice that

Yes, Toby, probably because that programme involved actually building actual schools rather than, as Alex points out, getting given them for free by your mates.

9 doesn’t make sense to me. It’s possible the Tories see women as a safer bet than men (historically, true to an extent) so are more concerned about a loss of female support in the polls; it’s possible they know women tend to support the welfare state more strongly; it’s possible they’ve misinterpreted the poll data.

I suggest they really are concerned, hence the little cheap n’ cheerful measure you forgot to list

— backtracking, at a not insignificant cost, on the combined raising/equalisation of the state pension age

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15333154

(But “flyer miles etc.” are not responses to a real or feared loss of support among women. Hugging huskies was part of Call Me Dave’s thing before the election, and it isn’t only about women — and very much is about the middle class.)

“It’s just that women voters seem to be among the first to cop on to it.”

Women might well notice it first — I’d expect that — but not change their voting behaviour first.

The MORI piece seems sound.

Longer time horizons of 20something women compared to their 20something male counterparts? If your goals in life are to play games and hang out with your mates – Forever! – then you might miss (for a time) the closure of the semi-skilled career track. If you’re thinking – even once in a while – about settling down and raising kids, the country is truly obviously down the shitter.

19: don’t forget that the numbers paint a picture of women being rather slower than men to work out that Conservative policies are bad news.

The trouble with leftish Lib Dems is that I don’t think any of them see themselves as as left-wing as Labour. The old breed of Lib Dem, who combined a healthy dislike for the Tories with a nice middle-class hatred of the labour movement, is more or less extinct, not least because New Labour had a much better claim to that pitch. What started developing under Ashdown, and galloped ahead under Kennedy, was a Lib Dem programme consistently and coherently to the Left of New Labour; my own MP, who replaced Labour’s Keith Bradley and essentially fought him from the Left, is one example. (The Lib Dems’ position on Iraq also helped.) So you’ve now got a fair number of Leftish Lib Dem MPs, stuck in a coalition with the Tories, who still criticise Labour from the Left; their argument is that, even if the net impact of the coalition on the country is negative, at least the LDs are making it less negative than it would have been. Labour, by contrast, had the chance to do something positive, but only did something slightly less negative than the Tories. (No, it doesn’t make much sense. “The dwarfs are for the dwarfs”, essentially.)

Demagogic faux-egalitarianism, as Will Self would say.

“But large amounts of money are being splurged untransparently on ideological pet projects of dubious value ”

Well, yes, that’s what tends to happen when a government of different ideological hue gets elected. An appalling problem but one not really solved by not having governments of different ideological hue being able to get elected.

“The trouble with leftish Lib Dems is that I don’t think any of them see themselves as as left-wing as Labour.”

It’s possible to make an entirely respectable argument that *all* LibDem MPs see themselves are more left wing than much of the Labour Party. And quite a few Tories too. After all, there’s nothing quite as conservative (note, small c) as much of the Labour Party.

21 ” don’t forget that the numbers paint a picture of women being rather slower than men to work out that Conservative policies are bad news”

I’d taken the numbers in, ajay, but failed to spell out my point. When I said

“Women might well notice it first—I’d expect that— but not change their voting behaviour first.”

I failed to add “so, the polls won’t necessarily show it”. I have noted massive complaints from many women about Condem welfare cuts, but often, they don’t, or don’t immediately, translate into support for a different party. There are various reasons for that. (I won’t bother to give them here. )

22 “You and your pesky facts, Ajay.” anyone, Chris, can parrot opinion poll data. It is its meaning that counts.

“Women aren’t stupid, and neither is the electorate.”

Both were stupid enough to fall for it once. What you are hoping is they won’t fall for it again; i.e. they aren’t THAT stupid. I have my doubts.

This is just a suggestion, maybe completely rubbish, but perhaps there’s a sense of panic over the fact that their share of the vote amongst women hasn’t gone up? After all, they do want a majority next time, and as Maria pointed out, they’ve done most of the nice stuff already, the blocking of hubby’s porn, the forced marriage thing, but they haven’t done all that much of the massive white-collar public sector layoff thing yet, which is presumably going to hit women the hardest . . .

Ben #1

State spending as a % of GDP grows naturally because of Baumol’s Cost Disease.

Honestly, Baumol’s Disease should be tatooed on the forehead of every libertarian who comments on how state spending has been growing out of control throughout history, and how they’d like it to be 3% like the good old 18th century.

“State spending as a % of GDP grows naturally because of Baumol’s Cost Disease.”

Umm, no. Services rise in price compared to manufactures as a result of BCD, sure.

That govt spending increases as a %ge of GDP is a result of deciding to deliver services through govt spending. Not BCD itself.

It’s not just quibble, it’s an important point.

Whether services should be delivered through govt spending is an entirely different question from whether they’re going to get more expensive relative to manufactures.

@Tim: To rephrase the point. If governments mostly provide services, then, in the absence of any change in the allocation of activities between governments and the private sector, the government share of total expenditure will tend to rise.

And in many cases it is aimed at (and undoubtedly succeeds at) altering behaviour by psychological manipulation at a deep level, for example attacking self-esteem, etc.

Which for one thing undermines any notion of consumer sovereignty, of course.

The phrase convicted by juries of their peers [or who willingly made bargains based on the expectations of what such a jury would do] for crimes established by laws enacted by and that could be repealed at any time by democratically elected governments is irrelevant there, I think. But I don’t suppose anyone wants this thread infected with discussion about the phrase “does violence to”, etymological speculation about ‘violate’ and cognates or consideration of where on the central – peripheral – analogical – metaphorical continuum talk of ‘psychological assault’ belongs.

I spent two years trying to define violence and pretty much gave up. I suspect that if we decide that advertising is violence we are, urm, doing violence to both words. On the other hand, how else might we describe the Spanish stolen babies scandal? Help is at hand, though: there’s a developing criminological literature on the concept of ‘harm’ which might be useful here.

So now that we’ve subdooed stubydoo with advertising-as-violence and a discussion that has wandered its way across four or five threads now (and with beatings, which will continue until morale improves), let’s consider whether ideological propaganda is violence. Does it matter whether the advertising is stationary, or carried by a person?

For example: suppose I decorate my Squid & Owl satchel with a sign or pin that says “this bookbag kills fascists.” Not only is this a form of ideological advertising, there is an implied threat that, if you are a fascist, I will hit you with my bookbag and you will die.

let’s consider whether ideological propaganda is violence. Does it matter whether the advertising is stationary, or carried by a person?

This has the wonderful sound of an excerpt from some sort of left-wing version of AP Herbert’s “Uncommon Law”. (Cheques written on a cow, libels via skywriting, etc.)

If governments mostly provide services, then, in the absence of any change in the allocation of activities between governments and the private sector, the government share of total expenditure will tend to rise.

That is a really interesting point. Never thought of that. So the road to socialism isn’t through nationalising the means of production after all; it’s through nationalising the means of service provision.

“If they were delivered privately they would still get more expensive. There is no pony.”

But from the other side of Baumol’s work we find that there might be a pony.

BCD happens because innovation (ie, increasing tfp, labour is only a special case of the general tfp point) is more difficult in services than manufactures.

Baumol has also spent a lot of time looking at what promotes innovation (note, innovation, not invention). He finds that market based systems do this better than planned ones. Thus, using just the work of this one economist, we might find that there is a pony. Move services from the planned to the market based part of the economy and find that BCD is lessened…possibly eliminated, but more likely just lessened.

He finds that market based systems do this better

Oh, he finds that does he? Does he get round to exoplaining how it is that a profit seeking bureaucracy does better than a public service orientated one?

If empirical data is admissible here, note that the second of the links provided above @40 shows the US spending 13.9%, the UK 7.6% of GDP on healthcare. As preliminary observations go, this makes the free market pony thesis look a bit, well, pony.

He finds that market based systems do this better than planned ones.

Unfortunately, he observed the cost disease across the entire economy. It is quite plausible, given that the cost disease is a thing, that much of what appears to be a public/private split is actually driven by it.

This post is really too silly to be worth rebutting. It’s too much effort to expend on something so little was spent on. But:

1) The scope of activities the state does has grown continuously since the war, it’s not just the proportion of GDP which has grown, the state now does things it didn’t do at all before.

2) Therefore it is not all Baumol’s cost disease

3) And it can’t all be described as part of the “post-war social contract”.

>The scope of activities the state does has grown continuously since the war, it’s not just the proportion of GDP which has grown, the state now does things it didn’t do at all before.<

As far as I know, that just isn't true in any western nation. proportion of gdp is quite stable since decades.

A bit late, but –

Tim Worstall @58: Did anyone study the effects of previous limited moves to market organisation (ie, competition but not on price) of NHS England, moves which did not take place in NHS Wales and NHS Scotland? I believe they did you know and I believe they found that NHS England did indeed increase tfp faster than NHS Wales or NHS Scotland.

That would be the Nuffield Trust (‘We see ourselves as philanthropic venture capitalists’).

That particular report was criticised quite witheringly by the BMA, as well as by CPPR at the U. of Glasgow.

But even if the findings were correct and NHS England were intrinsically much more productive than Scotland and Wales – indeed even if the findings went further and agreed with you that tfp had increased faster in England since devolution – that wouldn’t get close to establishing that ‘market-like’ reforms are responsible.

In any case, I think describing any introduction of competition into public provision as ‘market-like’ is verging on JQ’s ‘argument by definition’.

What is introduced as ‘competition’ may in fact owe any efficacy it has to diversity of approach enabling better practices to be developed, rather than to competition in the sense of rivalry (rivalness?) or harsh negative incentives (‘market discipline’). Even if some limited form of competition properly so-called were responsible for improvements, I don’t see that it can be chalked up as a victory for some ‘free market’ – profit-driven – approach.

Broadly speaking, what’s happened over the past thirty years is that strenuous efforts to cut back the scope of public sector activity have offset the increasing share of services in the economy with the result that the public sector share of GDP has been held constant.