Carnival Of The Polly-Kicking #3

I will write my own little paeon to Her Toynbee-ness in a little while, but in the meantime let's kick the Carnival off with The Vented Spleen.

Polly returns on another crusade to make sure that none of us would be stupid enough to vote Tory next time round. Today she’s on the subject of child poverty. What the woman knows about poverty I have no idea.

Go and read the whole thing, although I do very much like his endpoint.

"What's to be done? Dreaming Swedish dreams on near US tax levels leads to this impossibilism. Sooner or later, it has to be spelled out in public. Does Britain really want to be more Scandinavian and if so, will we pay the price?"

Hang on I thought you worshipped the Scandinavian dream or have you changed your mind since Mr. Worstall kept pointing out that they have no minimum wage of state health service? I thought you dreamed of shacking up their to be gobbled by your king?

Either I have you all wrong or you’re now just changing your stance to suit whatever you’re writing. I think the latter.

Of course Polly you can do your bit… if £28bn is going to get 300,000 children out of poverty why not make a £140,000 start?

Quite so. And on we go to the economics of poverty with Master Worstall.

By defining poverty in relative terms all of the debate is thus concentrated on how to reduce inequality. No mention at all is made of the actual standard of living. Only of the relative standard within the nation. Which leads to this sort of absurdity:

Only three countries of the EU 25 have more child poverty than Britain.

This measures, of course, relative poverty within each nation. That is, how many people are under 60% of median income within each nation. Now look at this chart.

The Latvian GDP per capita is less than half that of the UK (and that is adjusted for purchasing power to boot). Where do you think people would rather be poor? Below 60% of median in a rich country? Or even, dare one say it, above median in a poor one?

What is actually happening out there in the real world? What can we say about people’s revealed preferences? Poland, for example, again on less than 50% of UK GDP per capita?

Well, we know the answer to that one, don’t we? Haven’t 500,000 (or whatever the actual figure is) Poles actually voted with their feet? We’d rather be relatively poor in a rich country than higher up the ladder in a poor one?

And that is the key, of course. Unfortunately, simple though this concept is, it is something that Polly seems utterly unable to grasp; this is probably because she is so stupid that she failed the 11+ (a bit like John Prescott really).

UPDATE: More to come, of course, from the ever-reliable crutch for we humble Polly-bashers, Factchecking Pollyanna, who reveals that Polly's figures on boardroom pay as compared to workers' are... well, not exactly fabricated, but certainly disingenuous.

Now, the average of all manual workers pay is different from the average pay of people working in a FTSE-100 company, as I am sure the employees of, say, 3i or Barclays or Schroders will be able to confirm.

When Polly called these "hard figures", I initially assumed she meant tough or rigorous, rather than difficult to get right.

Of Polly's further mention of directors' pay, FP points out:

Or could it be that there is scant causal link between directors' pay and child poverty?

Quite.

The poor little Greek boy is once more tisking Polly, rather than fisking, but can't resist pointing out her lunacy in his usual succint way.

Those main points again: the cost of buying a new Trident replacement every single year forever would be about 28 billion pounds annually, and this is 'not at all unaffordable'.

Is there any point, any point at all, at which the unbelievable, mindboggling sums of money that she is urging the government to splash out, ever make her just stop and think, even for a split second, "hang on - am I just being a barking fucking lunatic here?" Has someone just bought her a calculator with a 12-digit display?

UPDATE 2: She really is unbelievable which is why, although it is all very well pointing out her factual errors, it is always fun to get down and personal.

We will never abolish child poverty in a society shaped like this one

The way we live has to become fairer in every way. Politicians must begin the heavy lifting of public persuasion

Well, this is a little contentious, ain't it? Who, exactly, decides what is "fair", Polly? I mean, I don't think that it is fair that I should work hard, and that a third of what I earn is taken by the government and spent on things that I wouldn't buy. I don't think that it is fair that I should have to work for my money when some people don't. I also don't think that it is fair that politicians often claim almost twice their salary in expenses: the rest of us have to pay our expenses out of our own money (or, rather, what is left when the taxman has taken his share).

Whatever your political persuasion, "fair" is a very subjective term, Polly.
However his reign ends, whatever his legacy may be, one moment will always stand out as a monument to Tony Blair. It was that remarkable, utterly unexpected pledge back in 1999 that Labour would abolish child poverty by 2020.

Well, Polly, I think that Blair's legacy will be one of making extravagant promises that he couldn't keep; and this one would seem to fit in very nicely with the burgeoning pantheon of other expensive failures.

That sunny morning he sprung it on an astounded assembly of economists and poverty experts. The hall rippled with people turning to one another to ask if they had perhaps misheard? Did he really mean it? And if so, did he fully understand how radical it was?

No, he didn't mean it, and, yes, he understood that you would all swallow it hook, line and sinker (I am assuming that you were actually there, Polly, rather than making shit up as you usually do).

The answer was yes, he meant it, even if he is seized with spasmodic regret. It is one of his more admirable traits to nail himself to targets that matter, and work out afterwards how to do things that seem near impossible. (Abolishing hospital waiting lists by next year is another example.)

Well, yes, Pol; anyone can make promises. I promise to capture the moon, Polly, and then wear it as a hat whilst I serenade you underneath the balcony of you posh London mansion. I promise to ensure that every person in Britain has a million pounds by Christmas.

There, I've made the promises! Can I carry them out?

But his poverty promise is by far the toughest social pledge any British politician has ever made, harder even than the founding of the NHS. And yes, he probably well understood the Herculean scale of the task.

Yup. And he failed. Do you see, Polly? Making promises that you can't keep is easy.

Besides, as Tim Worstall pointed out, how are you measuring poverty? If you are measuring relative poverty it is, by definition, impossible to eradicate.

Certainly the chancellor did and he has pursued it as a highest priority, through thick and thin.

Yes, the profligate, useless, thieving cunt.

It has needed his fierce protection from ministers, and sometimes from his neighbour, clamouring to spend money on more popular vote-winners: the poor don't vote, they show no gratitude and the well-off don't know or don't care.

Ooooooh, those evil well-off people! Damn them and their ilk! Damn their £140,000 salaries! Damn them all to hell!

The first quarter-way target was missed as 700,000, and not a million children, were lifted out of poverty. Instead of celebrating success, the headlines called it "failure", so why stick to an impossible target?

Because it sounds more impressive? And because fucking idiots such as yourself will always fall for the rhetoric rather than really examining how and if the whole thing is achievable, Polly?

Because this is emblematic, the unshakable moral underpinning of this government (which Labour defectors would do well to remember). It stands as a constant rebuke to the Tories that they doubled child poverty during their 18 years, leaving appalling social wreckage.

Blah, blah, fucking blah. Listen, Polly, why are you only looking at the children? Can children earn money; do we still send them up chimneys or put them to work sewing shoes from the age of 5? (No, we put them in SureStart: I'm not sure that that is an improvement, frankly.)

So what you are actually talking about is poverty of the parents. Or is that distinct? Because, of course, the parents could be perfectly well-off, but starve and beat their children and lock them in the coal cellar.

Did the Tories have a pledge to impoverish children in their manifesto? No. So how did these children become impoverished? Their parents lost their jobs? Possibly. High interest rates screwed their mortgage payments? Probably.

These were all the consequence of massive economic upheavals that were entirely necessary; had we not made them, we would still be hanging around in the economic disaster zone of the 70s, when the government that you so admire were, effectively, bankrupt, not once but twice. Don't you ever forget, Polly, that the only reason that the government are able to spend so much money is because the Tories reformed the economy and allowed businesses to flourish.

It is such an effective moral back-stop that David Cameron has been obliged to sign up to it too. That is how seismic New Labour's effect has been on the political landscape, marking 1997 as just as decisive a shift in political geography as 1979 or even 1945. Those who say there's no difference should look at how the Tories are being hauled from the blue to the red side, with poverty a prime marker in the ideological tug of war.

Yeah, Pol, but mainly the Tories are being hauled to the Red side because NuLabour has made so many people clients of the state that the Tories have no option.

Intergenerational poverty is solidifying, so poor children are more firmly anchored to the floor than for decades, their social mobility frozen.

Yes, Pol, by shitty schooling and utter lack of ambition. Social mobility has dropped under Labour; as per, whilst promising the earth with one hand, they then take away opportunity with the other.

The drop-out rate at 16 is still a national disgrace.

Some people just aren't academic, Polly. You, for instance. If young people want to learn a trade and earn money rather than study calculus, then good luck to them. What is unacceptable is that a fifth of those dropping out at 16 are unable to read, write or do simple arithmetic. And that is the fault of shitty teachers and shitty schools.

Getting poor people into work helps, but not enough.

Really. Oh, right, we should all work and just

gift

them enough money to live very comfortably, shall we? That sounds eminently fair. You fuckwit.

Over half of all poor children have working parents, but the minimum wage is still £2 an hour below subsistence.

Where? And for how many hours worked?

Pay is topped up with credits and benefits that fail to keep up with earnings, let alone speed recipients out of poverty.

Tell you what, Polly; don't tax people below £12,000. There, for someone working full-time on the minimum wage, is about £1200 that they get to keep. Introduce the Citizen's Basic Income of roughly £5,000 a year and then they are effectively earning £15,500. Is that high enough for you, Pol? Or do you think that everyone should earn £140,000? Wow, that would be nice...

The cost of poverty in cash and social dislocation is far higher than the cost of making sure all families thrive. Even so, the price of abolishing it is very, very high. What will it take? Notionally, another £28bn a year if it were to be done entirely through direct redistribution in cash through tax credits.

One assumes that that includes all of the administration as well. Cripes! £28 billion; we can't even afford to clear the NHS deficit of £2 billion at the moment.

How much is that? It is the cost of buying, perhaps, a new Trident replacement every single year forever. Or look at it another way, it would still only be 2.5% of GDP, not at all unaffordable.

This would, of course, take the government's spend to roughly 45% of GDP. Is this sustainable? I would say not, myself.

Then, of course, having said that £28 billion is not affordable, Polly "does a Toynbee" and totally contradicts herself.

But of course it's all more difficult than that. To pour so much cash into credits and benefits would be politically impossible: it would wreck work incentives to pay out-of-work parents more than they could earn. And anyway, cash alone does not solve everything.

Quite right, Polly. Most particularly, it does not solve poverty if measured as on relative scale; all it does it to raise the bar.

It will take vastly more spending on social programmes, on education and skills in perpetuity. Consider that Sure Start children's centres are multiplying by seven with only double the cash, at risk of spreading their effect too thinly. Countless other good, proven schemes are underfunded, not spreading out or shelved for lack of money. Yesterday John Hutton suggested there wouldn't even be enough money to roll out his own Pathways to Work scheme with equal attention to all who need help, although it scores phenomenally well in getting people off incapacity benefit and back to work. Instead he would prioritise parents, to help more children out of poverty. If even a scheme with such a rapid payback to the exchequer in saved benefits can't get funds, what hope is there for programmes that only pay back when these children become parents?

No, Polly, when these children become productive members of society. Oh, and while we are about it, giving a lazy cunt more money as a child will not make him any less of a lazy cunt when he's older; he will just assume that it is his right. We are already seeing the problems associated with people seeing "free stuff" as their right.

Poor John Hutton did well in his reply to the devastating Rowntree report, though he left more questions than he could answer: the solution lies in hands above his pay grade. But he said what mattered. He called this report a milestone: "We accept it. We accept that we will not hit the target if we go on as we are. And we are never going to change that target." So there is the conundrum, and it's the same one for the Tories. Both parties will need to lay out their own statistically convincing road map to get where they say they are going.

Alright, Polly; here, very sketchily (I shall expand it at a later date: I may even email you the URL, Pol, to see if it gains credance).

• Introduce the Citizen's Basic Income for everybody. At £5,000 a year, I estimate this to cost roughly £250 billion in pure cash, but with minimal administration costs, since everybody receives it from the age of 16 until they die (we use the National Insurance database). The CBI not only ensures that people do not starve (provided that they are careful with their money) but also redresses the power balance between employer and employee.


• Introduce a Personal Tax Allowance of £12,000 (including the CBI? Or excluding?).


• Introduce a Flat Tax of 35% initially, then scaled back as needed.


• Abolish NICs.


• Privatise all schools and allow them to operate as independent businesses, and handing parents vouchers to allow them to chose which school they wish their children to go to (the best ones, hopefully).


• Privitise all hospitals and put in a system of funding through insurance, as detailed in this post. Roughly £58 pcm for decent cover (for a heavy smoker and drinker).


• Unemploment benefit to be run through private insurance. Roughly £20 pcm.


• All pensions to be run through private companies. Roughly £100 a month to pay out the same as the current state pension if retiring at 65.


• All of the above means that you can sack hundreds of thousands of civil servants, vast swathes of pen-pushing bureaucrats are released into the market. Luckily, you are already paying them their benefits through the CBI, so it doesn't cost anything. Hopefully, they will then start their own companies or join other private companies, thus increasing the country's wealth rather than being parasites on everyone else.

What do you think, Pol?

What's to be done?

I've just told you.

Dreaming Swedish dreams on near US tax levels leads to this impossibilism.

Near US tax levels?! I fucking wish!

Sooner or later, it has to be spelled out in public. Does Britain really want to be more Scandinavian and if so, will we pay the price?

No, and no.

Poverty will never be abolished without more equal incomes and lifestyles.

Yes, it will as long as you aren't measuring relative poverty, but absolute.

It takes higher taxes to pay for better public services and education from infancy.

No, no it doesn't. It simply requires the money that we have not to be pissed away by inefficient, expensive government schemes. See Wat Tyler for weekly wastage figures.

The way we live has to become fairer in every way, without such sharp social divisions in wealth and opportunity, and with no housing ghettos or school segregation. It took Sweden some 60 years of social democratic determination - unlikely by 2020, but at least the raw target could be hit. No society as grossly unequal as ours has ever cut child poverty significantly: wherever mega wealth is allowed to let rip, there will be severe poverty too.

For the last time, Polly, only if you measure poverty on a relative scale. If you measure absolute, then this is not true: the economy is not a closed system; someone at the top getting richer does not mean that someone at the bottom has to get poorer. For fuck's sake.

Politicians alone can't do the heavy lifting of public persuasion, though it's time they stopped running from the debate. It needs all who command trust - the major charities, the professionals in health, education, crime, police, judges and faith groups too, alongside all who rub up against poverty and its pernicious effects. Since both main parties (though not the Lib Dems) are signed up to abolition, it's time for a Royal Commission to draw up the roadmaps towards that shared goal.

Good god, woman, please will you define your fucking terms? I find myself asking the question again: are you a liar or fool?

And I find myself answering again: you are both. God, you piss me off; why won't you shut the fuck up?