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Chris is not impressed with Beecroft
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Rick is good on Beecroft
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Bloomberg reports that “France finds itself in a sweet spot, drawing the strongest auction demand since the European debt crisis began in 2009 as bond investors give Francois Hollande, the country’s first Socialist president in 17 years, the benefit of the doubt.”
ToUChstoneblog's Archive
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A brilliant post by Jonathan Portes on trhe Not the Treasury View blog.
He says: "with long-term government borrowing as cheap as in living memory, with unemployed workers and plenty of spare capacity and with the UK suffering from both creaking infrastructure and a chronic lack of housing supply, now is the time for government to borrow and invest. This is not just basic macroeconomics, it is common sense. "
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In the 'Inequalities' blog, Lindsey Macmillan and Paul Gregg look at the evidence about inter-generational unemployment. There’s lot less than politicians and media sometimes suggest: “only 0.3% or 15,000 households are in a position where both generations have never worked” and in a third of these households the younger generation has been unemployed less than 1 year.
There +is+ inter-generational worklessness, but “it is only in the labour markets with high unemployment that sons with workless dads are disproportionately more likely to be workless than sons with employed dads.” -
Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez & Stefanie Stantcheva look at 18 OECD countries and disputes the claim that low taxes on the rich raise productivity and economic growth. The optimal top tax rate could be over 80% and no one but the mega rich would lose out.
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A new SKOPE pamphlet by Ewart Keep looks at what puts people off training & education (amongst other things).
If people know that they are members of a group or come from an area where people tend only to get lousy jobs (or none) they may not see much point in education & training. Raising the number & quality of jobs available may change their minds.
The UK has a high percentage of graduates working in jobs that don't require degrees: suggests over-supply & is likely to exacerbate problems for those who aren't graduates. If you see yourself as destined for unemployment or a bad job you will be even less likely to find learning attractive.
It is less and less credible to say education isn't producing numeracy & literacy skills. What it does fail to provide are maturity, a positive attitude and work experience – but these are best obtained in workplaces; they really should be seen as employers' responsibility.
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John Monks on Europe's challenges
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Center for American Progress's Matt Browne draws attention to Hollande's election campaign, which, though aimed at a French audience who want France to remain French, was resolutely about achieving change at a European level. Has any previous election campaign in a country of comparable scale seen such a progressive mix of nationalism and internationalism?
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Good sense from Rick
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Thanks to everyone who joined us today for a live online seminar on benefits reform, with independent researchers Kate Bell and Declan Gaffney. You can see a recording of the seminar here:
Could National Insurance help make Britain’s welfare state more effective and popular?
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Guest post from Kate Bell and Declan Gaffney, ahead of their presentations to the TUC’s online seminar on benefits reform this Friday. Register now to attend in person or for an online reminder.
Tomorrow sees the publication of our report for the TUC, making the case for the revival of the contributory principle in the social security system. As we set out in a post on Wednesday, we need to move beyond the ‘something for nothing’ perspective which dominates discussion of social security in the UK and address the ‘nothing for something’ problem.
Too many people who pay into the system get nothing, or little, in return. This in turn helps to foster a ‘them and us’ culture where benefits are seen only as something for the poorest and most desperate in society – rather than fulfilling their original function of providing insurance and savings to spread costs across a life time. In this final post, we explore three areas where there is the potential improve the balance between contribution and entitlement.
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A survey by the MS Society looks at attitudes to disability: 21% said disabled people should just accept they can’t have the same opportunities in life, 24% think disabled people often exaggerate the extent of their physical limitations (and 76% of people with MS say there has been at least one occasion when someone questioned whether they have MS because they ‘looked well’).
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Chris Dillow asks “What is happening to profits and wages?”. He looks at GDP by income (wages, profits and ‘other’) since 1955 and says that “the wage share fell between 1975 and 1997, but recovered thereafter, only to slip back since 2009.”
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Guest post from Kate Bell and Declan Gaffney, ahead of their presentations to the TUC’s online seminar on benefits reform this Friday. Register now to attend in person or for an online reminder.
This year marks the 70th anniversary of Sir William Beveridge’s epoch-making report Social Insurance and Allied Services, which set out the main features of the post-war social security system. Famously, Beveridge proclaimed that ‘Benefit in return for contributions, rather than free allowances from the State, is what the people of Britain desire’. In a new Touchstone pamphlet we ask whether Beveridge’s contributory principle is relevant to social security in the 21st century, a subject we will be debating at a TUC seminar on Friday.
