l'Art Social

Partly inspired by a seminar given by Elizabeth Anderson at the IPPR on 13 June, in which the question of how far egalitarians should rely on income redistribution was debated. I argue that our main form of income redistribution, the social security system, achieves some equalisation of income but only as a by-product of poverty reduction. Egalitarian aims go far beyond poverty reduction, I guess, so the implication is that egalitarian strategies sit alongside the objectives of social security rather than informing them or- as some seem to feel these days- competing with them. To say that social security is mainly about reducing poverty, and that that's no bad thing, is not of course to say that poverty reduction in any way defines the limits of social justice, or that other welfare state functions do not serve broader egalitarian objectives.

A quick chart based on today's Households Below Average Income publication http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/index.php?page=hbai Real terms median income is shown before and after housing costs from 1994/5 to 2011/12. The median is slightly lower in 2011/12 than in 2001/02 on both measures.

This text is based on the most common words in a random sample of articles about social security appearing in the Daily Express between 2008 and 2011. The text was automatically generated with the word-order strictly following the frequency with which the words occurred (in descending order of frequency). My only interventions were to break the resulting sequence of words into three-line groupings, with the first four words forming the title and the last four a final free-standing line: and to add seven punctuation marks. Because of the limited and simple vocabulary used in this type of tabloid story, it's perhaps not surprising that the automatic procedure generates what may appear to be coherent phrases. And because of the nature of that vocabulary, these phrases are rather ugly.

I can't remember what prompted me to do this, but I find the result interesting as well as repellent.

Here's a chart that illustrates something which is relevant both to welfare and public finance, two of this blog's pet subjects. I want to use it as a way of opening up the question: how much does 'welfare' for people of working age cost and how has this changed over time? We hear a lot of assertions about these issues from politicians and commentators. But what is 'welfare', and what is 'welfare spending'? These are not the same question.

If values guide choices, what guides choice when you have to decide between values as well as options? On one account, such a situation is 'tragic': there are better and worse ways to proceed, but none that don't involve leaving a legitimate claim unmet. I argue that this is a reasonable way of thinking about the situation the Labour party would face if it won the 2015 election.

It seems everybody wants to carry out their own media content analysis on welfare these days. Unfortunately nobody seems to want to put in the work needed if you want to avoid coming to silly conclusions. Yesterday I wrote about exaggerated claims circulating on the left-wing twittersphere about an implausible rise in the use of the word 'scrounger' http://lartsocial.org/press . Today, the right has hit back with an even sillier claim: the Guardian and Independent are the titles that stigmatise benefit claimants most.

I'm not sure where this chart https://twitter.com/GavinEdwards77/status/329203347208949760/photo/1 which has been doing the rounds on twitter originates from, but it seems to have quickly acquired mythological status. It appears to show the number of times the word(s) 'scrounger(s)' appeared in the UK press from 1994 to the present, with a huge unprecedented rise coinciding with the arrival of the coalition in power.

Over at Joseph Rowntree Foundation's #antipoverty communications debate, people have been talking about the need to depoliticise public discussion of poverty. Whatever your views on whether that's possible or desirable, depoliticisation surely shouldn't come at the cost of de-historicisation. Hence this chart, which shows the timing of the rise in poverty for working age adults and children.

Poverty in the UK has a history: some- not all- of that history is political. Let's not pretend otherwise.

From the BBC news website: 'The number of households that will be affected by a new £500 a week benefit cap has fallen by over a quarter, the Department for Work and Pensions says.The government initially estimated that 56,000 households would see their benefits reduced by the policy, losing on average around £93 per week.It now expects 40,000 households to be affected.
The department said the change came as more people sought help to get into work.'

In which I come a poor second to Jules Birch http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/taking-the-strain/6526460.blog in drawing out the parallels between the problems with the1983 housing benefit changes as recounted by Nicholas Timmins and the current worries about Universal Credit.