What is the point of labour ?

[coprolite]

2 minutes ago, strichener said:

There is no point speaking about relative poverty.  This will never be eradicated and we certainly shouldn't be expecting the benefits system to do so.

There is a point. It helps you to understand whether any particular group is among the worst off in society.

Agree it doesn't tell you whether they are actually poor. The absolute poverty line could be well below the relative poverty line or could be above the median (and probably is in the poorest countries). So it's pretty useless at telling you who's actually poor. 

But movements in the composition can identify (relative) winners and losers from changes in policy or events. 

The way the statistics have been presented in that report is not useful in the most part, but it does tell ud that there's been a significant change in the composition of the poorest part of society, which now includes more children. 

That's not sufficient to conclude that there are more poor children, but it's consistent with the possibility. 

Some people might think that's a good thing. 

[strichener]

28 minutes ago, coprolite said:

There is a point. It helps you to understand whether any particular group is among the worst off in society.

Agree it doesn't tell you whether they are actually poor. The absolute poverty line could be well below the relative poverty line or could be above the median (and probably is in the poorest countries). So it's pretty useless at telling you who's actually poor. 

But movements in the composition can identify (relative) winners and losers from changes in policy or events. 

The way the statistics have been presented in that report is not useful in the most part, but it does tell ud that there's been a significant change in the composition of the poorest part of society, which now includes more children. 

That's not sufficient to conclude that there are more poor children, but it's consistent with the possibility. 

Some people might think that's a good thing. 

Agreed, as a measure of inequality it may have a use.  As a measure of how poor people are it is pointless. 

[Dunning1874]

19 hours ago, virginton said:

Didn't realise Helen Lovejoy posted on here tbh. 

I'd rather a government ignored such emotive, single impact group pish and instead focused on the societal level drivers of poverty: such as rent controls and ending no-fault evictions, as a first step towards ending landlordism. I don't expect the Labour government to do that either, but the idea that ending the two child benefit cap is the best approach to tackling poverty is questionable to say the least.

It's not an either or question though. You're absolutely right that there are deeper structural issues which need to be addressed through long-term policy changes: that being the case doesn't mean ending the cap as well is a bad idea as an immediate change which will still alleviate poverty for hundreds of thousands.

10 hours ago, Todd_is_God said:

This could be achieved, in part, by reducing demand for the finite housing stock by reducing net migration and/or quicker processing and removal of failed asylum seekers.

No-one wants to do that, though, despite the cost of housing being an obvious supply and demand issue, out of fear of being labelled racist.

Yes, no one wants to do that, just the previous government and the new one both beating their chests incessantly over several years about how they're going to reduce immigration, STOP THE BOATS and increase deportations.

The primary cause of ever increasing housing costs is not immigration but parasitic landlords leeching off productive members of society, with migrants firmly included in the latter. Until this is addressed nothing will be resolved.

[Todd_is_God]

10 minutes ago, Dunning1874 said:

Yes, no one wants to do that, just the previous government and the new one both beating their chests incessantly over several years about how they're going to reduce immigration

Yet it's increased. And the public are not generally supportive of any measures to reduce it. Quite the opposite.

10 minutes ago, Dunning1874 said:

The primary cause of ever increasing housing costs is not immigration but parasitic landlords leeching off productive members of society

As with any and every commodity it's a simple supply and demand issue.

To address it you need to both increase the housing stock and reduce demand.

It’s not exactly an opportunity unique to the UK.

Edited July 25 by Todd_is_God

[Cheese]

There's anywhere between 500,000 and 1 million properties sitting empty in the UK at any one time. Including around 250,000 long term empty properties.

So it's less of a supply/demand thing and more of a landlord thing.

[coprolite]

14 minutes ago, Cheese said:

There's anywhere between 500,000 and 1 million properties sitting empty in the UK at any one time. Including around 250,000 long term empty properties.

So it's less of a supply/demand thing and more of a landlord thing.

Lots of those are in places no one wants to live because there's no jobs, shite transport links to places with jobs and just generally because they're post industrial shitholes. It's not exactly the fault of individual landlords that Liverpool docks for example no longer serve the empire. 

On the other hand the pretence that tax breaks for buy to let landlords or furnished holiday lets do anything for the housing stock (see telegraph, mail etc) is laughable. 

Although i don't think landlords are entirely to blame for empty properties, there is no good argument for private landlords making any sort of contribution towards the economy and plenty of arguments that the UK housing market is not much more than a way for capital owners to extract the surplus created by labour. It's enclosure and clearances by anf for the petty bourgeois 

[vikingTON]

1 hour ago, Dunning1874 said:

It's not an either or question though. You're absolutely right that there are deeper structural issues which need to be addressed through long-term policy changes: that being the case doesn't mean ending the cap as well is a bad idea as an immediate change which will still alleviate poverty for hundreds of thousands.

It is an either/or because the UK (and Scotland too) are not shitting money to deal with the myriad social and economic problems that they face. Pretending that the bottom line either does not matter (see the Truss/Kwarteng budget) or deflecting it away with talk about Trident/defence spending is not serious.

Politics is about making choices about where resources should be allocated and where political capital should be spent too. This also applies to measures to combat poverty that have a direct impact on the bottom line of government finances: the most impactful and fair measures should take priority. Galloping rates of rent/housing costs are a far more signficant driving force of poverty (and high benefit costs too) than lifting the two child cap.

Edited July 25 by vikingTON

[vikingTON]

2 hours ago, coprolite said:

There is a point. It helps you to understand whether any particular group is among the worst off in society.

The way the statistics have been presented in that report is not useful in the most part, but it does tell ud that there's been a significant change in the composition of the poorest part of society, which now includes more children.

No it doesn't:

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn07096/

Quote

Over the longer-term, poverty rates have reduced since the late 1990s for children, pensioners, and working-age parents. However, for working-age adults without dependent children the likelihood of being in relative low income has increased.

This is because the UK in the 1990s and 2000s was not actually an idyllic existence for single parent households or households with many children. Those groups were always relatively poorer than the median income of the population after housing costs - and would remain so under pretty much any sane redistribution model. For some people in that position it is unfortunate - for others it is poor planning.

[coprolite]

38 minutes ago, virginton said:

It is an either/or because the UK (and Scotland too) are not shitting money to deal with the myriad social and economic problems that they face. Pretending that the bottom line either does not matter (see the Truss/Kwartend budget) or deflecting it away with talk about Trident/defence spending is not serious.

Politics is about making choices about where resources should be allocated and where political capital should be spent too. This also applies to measures to combat poverty that have a direct impact on the bottom line of government finances: the most impactful and fair measures should take priority. Galloping rates of rent/housing costs are a far more signficant driving force of poverty (and high benefit costs too) than lifting the two child cap.

This is a logically consistent argument but partly irrelevant to the real reason the benefit cap won't be lifted. 

The government isn't currently working on a structural overhaul of the UK's housing market. It would have a huge impact on poverty if they did, but they're shitebags and middle England loves the possibility that one day they can buy to let and they call the shots. 

Your point about political capital is relevant. The benefit cap isn't being kept became there's better things to spend money on. It's being kept so that tabloid headline writers don't dig up examples of ten child state funded layabouts to publish alongside the sory about how Keith is enabling them. 

 

There's a fair amount of doubt as to whether the benefit cap is a net saving. There are longer term costs to child poverty which are unquantifiable but probably large. I'd expect that the savings rate on the income is somewhere around nil, so that money will circulate with a decent fiscal multiplier. 

Part of the political choice here was to commit to not raising taxes. That's definitely something that costs more with less bang for the buck. 

[coprolite]

33 minutes ago, virginton said:

No it doesn't:

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn07096/

This is because the UK in the 1990s and 2000s was not actually an idyllic existence for single parent households or households with many children. Those groups were always relatively poorer than the median income of the population after housing costs - and would remain so under pretty much any sane redistribution model. For some people in that position it is unfortunate - for others it is poor planning.

A change over a couple if years isn't the same as a change over a couple of decades is it

[DeeTillEhDeh]

The argument over the 2 child cap isn't about economics, it's a political decision.

Equally, if they agree to remove the cap (and they will) that will be  a political decision.

[Todd_is_God]

1 hour ago, Cheese said:

There's anywhere between 500,000 and 1 million properties sitting empty in the UK at any one time. Including around 250,000 long term empty properties.

So it's less of a supply/demand thing and more of a landlord thing.

It’s exactly a supply and demand thing. There are areas where you can buy houses for incredibly low prices, but no-one buys them because there is no demand.

[Granny Danger]

Just went by Downing Street.  Starmer not in apparently.

I asked if he was at IKEA and they just laughed.

 

[HTG]

I'm not sure why anyone would put something like this on Twitter the day after they voted against a measure to help reduce child poverty. The optics are dreadful. We all get the fact that there are a number of reasons why child poverty exists but you've flat out voted against taking the first step in terms of removing something you have direct responsibility for.  Never mind, chuck another £45m at the binfire that is the Royal Family ...

 

[DeeTillEhDeh]

I get that a government has to make tough decisions but the reality is that Labour's actions are miles away from their words.

The number of MPs saying they want the cap abolished (during the campaign) yet do the exact opposite when it comes to the vote. 

They are mealy-mouthed cowards.

 

[aDONisSheep]

Shyt the bed, now we're getting hung up on merits of measurement and whether relative poverty exactly maps onto actual poverty!

To a certain extent that's just semantics, we are the 6th largest economy in the world, but we're near the bottom of comparable countries in terms of child poverty.

 

This policy is simply cruel, lifting it won't cure 'poverty' but it will alleviate it for a couple of hundred thousand kids.  Labour previously abhorred it, but have now decided that it's not really a priority (for reasons known only to themselves) and that those poor-kids it would have helped, need to 'suck it up'. 

Labour have the levers, they even have the leeway (see Ukraine example).  They have chosen not to.  KNVTS!

 

Yours, 

aDONis

 

[scottsdad]

22 minutes ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

I get that a government has to make tough decisions but the reality is that Labour's actions are miles away from their words.

The number of MPs saying they want the cap abolished (during the campaign) yet do the exact opposite when it comes to the vote. 

They are mealy-mouthed cowards.

 

Starmer did say during the campaign that they couldn't afford to lift the cap. It wasn't in the manifesto. 

[GordonS]

34 minutes ago, HTG said:

I'm not sure why anyone would put something like this on Twitter the day after they voted against a measure to help reduce child poverty. The optics are dreadful. We all get the fact that there are a number of reasons why child poverty exists but you've flat out voted against taking the first step in terms of removing something you have direct responsibility for.  Never mind, chuck another £45m at the binfire that is the Royal Family ...

 

I detested her because of things I saw her say and do as a councillor, and I don't imagine that's going to get any better now she's an MP.

Drug dealers have more integrity than Sullivan.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

7 minutes ago, scottsdad said:

Starmer did say during the campaign that they couldn't afford to lift the cap. It wasn't in the manifesto. 

I'm talking about individual MPs who said they would.

[GordonS]

52 minutes ago, Granny Danger said:

Just went by Downing Street.  Starmer not in apparently.

I asked if he was at IKEA and they just laughed.

 

Title of this thread gets on my wick. Ikea only rhymes with Keir and beer if you're a slack-jawed Sassenach that can't speak English properly.