Unequal

Updated to take into account comments by MrRob. I’m glad someone is bothering to pick me up on stuff, to be honest.  Beat’s the shit out of the standard echochamber

This is been  everywhere already, but I’m playing catch-up after this weekend’s blogging inertia:

As has been pointed out ad nauseam, ad infinitum: What difference does it make how big the gap is between the highest and the lowest earners, so long as the poorest are getting richer?  Should not the real question be: Are the poorest better off now then they once were?  To compare oneself to the  richest (or anyone else for that matter) is both irrelevant and the politics of envy.   What someone else earns does not affect me in the slightest, beyond perhaps provoking a jealous desire to do better. Didn’t think this statement through;  ‘cause it bloody does, it’s just not entirely relevant to the point I’m trying to make.

An entirely separate question is that of social mobility, i.e. how hard is it to better oneself and become more affluent. Well if you work at it, attain sought-after skills and experience, and given the truly demented dilution of the skills pool these days- it’s relatively simple to do well in modern Britain. In principal, anyway. 

Problem is, the state will fight you every step of the way.   If you are on benefits and out of work to start with, you will be punished for attaining even minimum wage work.  Case in point: relatives of mine are a couple with three young kids, neither of them have any real qualifications, but both have taken minimum wage jobs in retail.  Now the consequence of this conscious decision to not be a burden on the taxpayer is a substantial net loss of income.  They have also had to struggle while jobless friends have more disposable cash and far easier access to better housing.  Labour have done nothing to promote social mobility; they have done plenty to prevent it.

It’s not like it would be particularly hard to implement policy in favour of self-betterment either;  for the same cost of the 2.5% VAT decrease, the government could’ve raised the income tax threshold to 10 grand and taken about 3 million people out of the tax system altogether.   That would have shown some interest in the welfare of the worst off.  But the government has shown that it is more concerned with keeping the client state in their pocket and ruining the prospects of a generation, just so they can retain hold of the reigns for a bit longer.

Anyway, lets look at the damn report(my comments in red):

The report finds:

1. Parents of public school-educated sons can expect their children to be paid eight per cent more by their mid-20s than boys educated at state schools; Erm, okay.  Public schools are better, being unfettered by the meddlings of politicians. What’s the takeaway lesson here?
2. At school poor British white boys are well below the national average by the time they are seven, deteriorating further after they are 11.  No hope, no expectation to try, no examples to follow.  Welcome to modern Britain.
3. Women are paid 21 per cent less than the national average, despite women into their 40s having better qualifications than men;  This is not a surprise. They generally take different career paths and take several years off (on average) to have kids.
4. Britain has one of the most unequal societies in the world, with income inequality ahead of Ireland, Japan, Spain, Canada, Germany and France. Inequality is worse in England than Wales and Scotland;  Load of wank. This figure means nothing (we might have a load of rich people throwing the trend by living here) and we’re equivalent to the OECD average anyway, see pic. h/t Burning our money
5. A typical professional on the verge of retiring is worth nearly £1 million compared with just £59,000 for someone who is long-term unemployed.  Not wanting to go all Daily Mail here, but: get a job?
6. Poverty rates are among the worst in Europe, with only Italy, Spain and Greece faring worse.  What the fuck do they think poverty is? Do please differentiate between RELATIVE and ABSOLUTE poverty.  We don’t have much in the way of shanty towns round these parts. See Tom Harris – who I’m liking more by the day.
7. Average and below average White British children are less likely than those from minority ethnic groups to go on to higher education.  My original comment here vaguely alluded to ‘ethnics’ having a better work ethic than the ‘natives’.   What I meant to imply was the documented superior academic performance of students of South and South-east Asian descent here and in the US.  Apparently this is due to a greater cultural fear of failure and generally higher aspirations toward academic success.  MrRob rather cynically suggests in the comments that positive discrimination may have a part in this too. Didn’t occur to me, to be honest.  I’m so sheltered.   After further heated analysis in the comments, we have ascertained that this whole statement in the original Telegraph article is almost certainly bollocks and has no factual basis in the published study.  I move that it be struck from the record.
8. More than half of children educated at private schools, and more than 40 per cent of those with professional parents, go to the top Russell group of universities. Converse of number 2: Those who are guided and have examples to follow will do better. This is not rocket science.
9. Two-thirds of those with professional parents receive firsts or upper seconds, but only half of those with unskilled parents.  I wonder why?

The socialists have done their damage again. It just remains to be seen whether Blu-Labour can reign back the destructive influence of the state on the lives of the lower tiers of society.  

It is not difficult: all they need to do is less.