Coppola Comment

In 1795, the parish of Speen, in Berkshire, England, embarked on a radical new system of poor relief . Due to the ruinous French wars and a series of poor harvests, grain prices were rising sharply. As bread was the staple food of the poor, rising grain prices increased poverty and caused unrest. Concerned by the possibility of riots, the parish decided to provide subsistence-level income support to the working poor. The amounts paid were anchored to the price of bread. Each member of a family qualified for a payment, so the larger the family, the more they received. In effect, it was a system of in-work benefits. Subsistence-level income support already existed for the non-working poor. The Poor Laws , first introduced in Elizabethan times, distinguished between different categories of “poor” and treated them differently. At the time that the Speenhamland system was introduced, the old, inflrm and children were placed in poorhouses, where they were cared for and were not expecte

This post originally appeared on Pieria in July 2014.  Roger Farmer has a blogpost in which he shows that labour markets don’t clear. Specifically, employment varies with the business cycle, whereas the labour force participation rate and hours worked only show long-term secular trends. During cyclical downturns, therefore, we must conclude that there is more labour available than there are jobs. New Keynesians say that the reason for this is sticky wages . If only nominal wages could fall enough,the market would clear and there would be no cyclical increase in unemployment. Therefore there should be labour market deregulation so that wages can flex with the business cycle. Roger Farmer questions this: he argues that the market simply does not clear at any wage. I disagree. I think the market does clear – when wages fall to starvation level. Humans need a minimum income to sustain life, but employers have no responsibility for ensuring that the remuneration of employees me

I haven't written a post for a while. I wanted everyone to read the post I wrote in November about my niece Annie's suicide . Writing new posts drops older ones down the list, and I didn't want her memorial post to disappear off the radar until after her funeral. Annie's funeral was last Tuesday, 18th December, the day after her 29th birthday. Now, it is time to write again. But not yet to move on from the issues that Annie's death highlights. This post is about the link between mental ill health and homelessness. Particularly, "street" homelessness, or in common parlance, "sleeping rough". Homelessness and rough sleeping have risen hugely in recent years. Government statistics show that between 2010-15, estimates of the number of those sleeping rough rose by 102%. This is partly due to changes in methodology to correct suspected under-reporting of the problem. But the Government admits that there is a real and considerable increase in th

The desire to judge people's motives rather than addressing their needs is a “British disease”. We have been suffering from it for hundreds of years, cycling endlessly through repeated cycles of generosity and harshness. Each cycle ends in public outrage and an abrupt reversal: but the memory eventually fades, and the disease reappears in a new form. In this post, I outline the tragic history of Britain's repeated attempts to "categorise the poor". For centuries, successive British social systems have recognised that there are people who cannot work, whether because they are too young, too old, too ill or too infirm. These people need to be provided for by others – in the first instance families, but where family support networks break down, support must be provided by the wider community. And for centuries, successive British social systems have also recognised the existence of people who are perfectly capable of working but are not doing so. Most of these

The Chancellor's Autumn Statement contained an apparent U-turn on the cuts to tax credits outlined in the July budget. Predictably, this was presented as the Chancellor "listening" to those concerned about the impact of sudden large falls in income for working families at the bottom end of the income spectrum. The Conservatives continue to position themselves as the party for "hard-working families". However, this isn't quite what it seems. The income cuts for low-income working families are not cancelled, they are merely delayed. The Chancellor has effectively hung his hoped-for reduction in tax credits expenditure on the roll-out of Universal Credit (UC). Because the UC changes announced in July have not been reversed in parallel with the tax credits climbdown, many new UC claimants will receive less than they would have received under the tax credits regime. As this chart from the Resolution Foundation shows, rollout of Universal Credit by 2020 would

No , says  The Times ' David Smith . He says that the notion that there was a pause in austerity is an "austerity myth". He points to this chart  from the Office for Budget Responsibility  that shows fiscal consolidation as a percentage of GDP (relative to the 2008 Budget) continuing on   throughout 2013 and 2014 and 2015: But the OBR's chart doesn't actually show what I would define as austerity. It shows the size of the government budget as a percentage of GDP relative to previous budgets. That's a good deal of moving parts. And that creates a good deal of ambiguity. Under such a definition, if the economy grows and government spending stays constant, there has been fiscal consolidation. In fact, if the size of the budget  grows  but the economy grows more, there has still been "fiscal consolidation".  What I am referring to when I claim that Osborne paused austerity in 2013 is the pause in the slashing back of government spending. Simply,