Tim Worstall

Social Inequality.

Here’s an interesting thing:

The rich-poor divide in Britain is as great as ever, 60 years after the
founding of the welfare state, according to new research that will make
embarrassing reading for the Government.
….

Prof Daniel Dorling, from the University of Leeds,
said the report, Life in Britain: Using millennial census data to
understand poverty, inequality and place, gave great insight into
inequalities. "Our research exploits data from the most detailed census
information ever gathered on health, education, housing, employment and
poverty.

"These are the aspects of British life
that closely reflect the five ‘giant evils’ of disease, ignorance,
squalor, idleness and want that William Beveridge identified in his
1942 report leading to the creation of a welfare state."

So, we’ve tried a 60 year experiment and it didn’t work. Time to try something new eh? Abolish the welfare state.

In

10 responses

  1. Jim Avatar
    Jim

    I know you’re attempting to emulate the profundity and piercing insight of Instapundit, but don’t you even pretend to have a point these days?
    Daniel Dorling is constantly calling for *more* redistribution, not less. While inequalities in the areas he highlighted are high, this is not because there is more, say, infant mortality or overcrowding in the UK than when the welfare state began (there is, of course, far less), but because things improved faster in more well-off areas. The answer, as Dorling has pointed out, is more investment in public services.

    Reply
  2. JohnM Avatar
    JohnM

    things improved faster in more well-off areas
    Your argument implies that the welfare state helped the wrong people, but surely the better off would have done fine anyway, even if there had been no welfare state. In other words the welfare state failed to help the people it was supposed to help.
    Why then is the solution not to change the policy but paradoxically to have even more of it?

    Reply
  3. Tim Newman Avatar
    Tim Newman

    Why then is the solution not to change the policy but paradoxically to have even more of it?
    This is socialist mantra. Never admit a mistake has been made, plough on regardless in the hope things will get better.

    Reply
  4. Jim Avatar
    Jim

    “Your argument implies that the welfare state helped the wrong people”
    Since health, education and housing indicators have all improved measurably for lower income areas and groups of people, the welfare state clearly helped them. If the well-off fared even better as a result of their higher incomes, more power to them, but to suggest that this means public services “helped the wrong people” is idiocy.
    Tim adds: Did health, housing and education for lower income groups all improve in the 60 years before the creation of the welfare state? Yes. Did they, in the past 60 years, improve in places without a welfare state? Yes.
    So the purpose and virtue of a welfare state is what?

    Reply
  5. Jim Avatar
    Jim

    “plough on regardless in the hope things will get better”
    The point is, things did get better. I know the right-wing mantra is to simply deny this reality, but that’s your problem, not mine.

    Reply
  6. alan Avatar
    alan

    I don’t think the argument is that a redistribution should not take place…. we can’t leave sick or starving people to fend for themselves. Surely the question now is to determine the best mechanism of delivery, either state provision with its costs, bureaucracy, regulation and producer power against a more efficient market solution offering a higher degree of consumer power to those that choose to exercise it, at the extreme giving people a cheque and allowing them to do what they want with it, or providing people with vouchers, my view is that if we treat people as adults by giving them free choice they would be more likely to exercise that choice to better their own lot.

    Reply
  7. Rob Read Avatar
    Rob Read

    Alan,
    Don’t “give” people a cheque, give them a loan instead, and a citizens dividend.
    Welfare Cheques can only be written by disguised slave labour i.e. making the productive work longer and harder.
    The welfare state HAS BEEN A DISASTER it’s time to stop the Societal Katrina.

    Reply
  8. JohnM Avatar
    JohnM

    Jim
    That the condition of the poorest people improved during the 50s and 60s is correct. This was a boom-time of full employment and increasing wages for all. It’s hardly obvious that the welfare state was the principle cause. Conditions improved even more dramatically in the US, long before Lyndon Johnson’s welfare reforms.
    How could that happen?
    In 1996 Bill Clinton enacted welfare reforms that eliminated long term income support for several groups. Many predicted starving and riots.
    Why didn’t that happen?
    In the century before compulsory education, voluntary attendance at private schools reached 95%+, with similar levels of literacy. Technical education was widespread.
    The state didn’t do this so how could that happen?
    In the same period, every major hospital much as still exists today and every university was built using private donations. Not only built but staffed and maintained.
    The state didn’t do this so how could that happen?
    To argue that despite all the international comparisons to the contrary, the improvement of the poorest is mainly due to the welfare state is quite an act of faith.

    Reply
  9. alan Avatar
    alan

    Rob,
    you’ve got be realistic, in a service economy there are some people who cannot contribute anything,that and the fact that the minimum wage has priced their skill sets out of the market.
    We’ll always have to carry people, just suggesting a way in which we can boost their confidence and self respect.
    Giving them a loan when they have no means (other than the lottery) of re-paying would just crush their spirits further. Its not the fact that you pay taxes to house, clothe and feed these people that annoys me its the jobs that are created to build a Nu Labour client state, whose employees look down on their primary clients (the poor)fostering distrust and alienating them further, at the same time they pontificate their PC ideas to the rest of the population so as not to be seen targeting a specific group or demographic. The citizend dividend is more appealing but would never be accepted by the special interest groups. Tax credits seem to have been designed to expand this client state further, the whole of this expanded welfare state is a disgrace, and they call themselves socialists

    Reply
  10. dearieme Avatar
    dearieme

    “We’ll always have to carry people”: true, but we might give some thought as to how they might make a contribution, which would be good both for them and for their subsidisers.
    For instance, we have an aging population. Why not find some way of employing subsidised porters at railway and bus stations to help the old – and others – with their luggage? There are no unsubsidised porters to displace. Look at medieval monasteries; can we learn from the use of “lay brothers”? How about clearing up rubbish, cleaning out canals and dozens of other jobs left undone?

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Discover more from Tim Worstall

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading