Of course the Conservatives are in serious trouble here — their underlying narrative has been totally blown out of the water.
But that still leaves me tending to agree with Sunny that Labour are in trouble too — for their underlying narrative was barely different. Brown was a high-priest of light-touch financial regulation: it is frankly vomit-making now to see him posturing as a saviour.
It is deeply premature to think that there is a death of New Labour here.
For Brown isn’t doing enough to save us from financial and economic ruin. As I have argued repeatedly (see e.g. twitter.com/RupertRead, as well as my blog), this government’s continued neo-liberal instincts are still hobbling it at almost every turn. Still, LIBOR is high; still, small businesses (and large ones!) are going to the wall without access to credit lines; still, the banks are being allowed to operate at arm’s length… There is a pitiful failure of nerve in the government, a pitiful failure to grasp the historic opportunity here, which a Roosevelt would not fail to grasp.
And that’s only the government’s failure on the financial and economic front. Its failure on the environmental front is far more reckless and complete. The pre-budget report recklessly promotes the trashing of our environment for uncertain short-term economic gain. This is an utter and heart-rending (when one thinks of those who will suffer from it) failure/absence of vision.
We need the banks democratically controlled (or re-mutualised), (and) we need a Green New Deal. (http://www.greenparty.org.uk/membership/green-new-deal/index.html ) These are what the Green Party is calling for. By contrast, Labour’s sad little offerings will not fundamentally change its fortunes — still less, those of our civilisation, which, on current form and with current trajectory, is heading fast for the rocks, no matter whether Brown or Cameron ‘pilots’ our portion of it.

I doubt the Conservatives will start talking about tax rates because it plays into Labour’s hands of opening up another class war, which Brown and Darling are clearly desperate to pursue.

Cameron and Osborne are rightly sticking to holding the government to account while putting together their package of putting restraints on government spending and cutting out government waste to help put money back in people’s pockets.

http://www.lettersfromatory.com

“putting together their package of putting restraints on government spending… to help put money back in people’s pockets.”

Oh for fuck’s sake. Piss off and read some economics; at that point, you might realise how moronic your statement above is…

John B how much economics do we have to read before wasting money becomes a good thing ? Seems to me that less spending leads to lower taxes leads to more growth less debt lower interest rates more activity yum yum yum .As for economists , I think a period of silent shame might be observed by the whole lot of them.

PS The problem with the top rate is that it will not produce revenue and for ordinary tax payers it is the beggining of the classic New Labour Stealth attack.ID crads …but just for foreigners …to start with , is typical . First they came for the rich but as we all know you cannot get much from them Soon they will be coming for me Mrs N and the three little Ns

I think Sunder’s point i) – “This is why even Thatcher and Reagan were unable to reduce government spending and the role of the state … This was also the central issue in the US election.” is a misunderstanding of what Obama will do state-side. Obama has said, again and again, that he’s going to cut the size of government. In doing so, he’ll destroy the “brand” of the Republicans as fiscal conservatives. Heck, he’s appointed his head, and deputy head, of the Office of Management and Budget before his Secretary of State or his Labour/Energy Secretaries. Obama – “As soon as the recovery is well under way, then we’ve got to set up a long-term plan to reduce the structural deficit and make sure that we’re not leaving a mountain of debt for the next generation.” Obama wants to cut the overall size of US government, cut taxes for most people, and reallocate said savings to progressive projects. Of the three main parties in the UK, that doesn’t sound like the Tories, nor Labour. Whether Clegg will be able to capitalise on the different mood in Washington is another matter entirely.

“Seems to me that less spending leads to lower taxes leads to more growth less debt lower interest rates more activity yum yum yum”

Yes, and I’m sure it seemed that way to Herbert Hoover in 1930 too.

Scott

I disagree with your claim about Obama’s agenda. The quote you offer does not say he wants to cut the size of US government. He has made the case for active government, which will involve a fiscal stimulus (and increased debt), and he has emphasised that “once the recovery is underway”, he would then later move to reduce that debt. Of course, he has prioritised the economy and his economic appointments. It was the agenda he won on, which was about the need for government to act.

So where does he say he wants to cut the overall size of government? He proposes some significant expansions of government activity – notably on healthcare, the economic stimulus package, skills and training, global warming and the need to create jobs for the new economy. Yes, he talks of the need to be pragmatic, look for efficiency, etc but within a clear argument for a greater need for government.

In his speeches, policy arguments and his book he directly challenges the state shrinking argument in a way which is unusual in US politics, given the centre of gravity is to the right of that in Britain and Europe (for example, universal healthcare remains a public priority, but is politically contested; and overall taxation and government welfare provision and redistribution is lower). Obama writes “In every period of great economic upheaval and transition we’ve depended on government action to open up opportunity, encourage competition and make the market work better … “”Without a clear governing philosophy President Bush has responded by pushing the conservative revolution to its logical conclusion – even lower taxes, even fewer regulations, and an even smaller safety net.”

He won the argument on the role of government, and on the case for modest redistribution, against McCain’s economic plan and against the Joe the Plumber attack. The tax cuts funded by repealing the Bush top rate was an argument about the case for redistribution.

Steve Richards wrote a good column about Obama’s argument on the role of government here
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/steve-richards/steve-richards-if-only-we-could-see-such-audacity-of-hope-840483.html

And this is Obama on the role of government in his Convention speech

—
“It’s a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have the obligation to treat each other with dignity and respect.
It’s a promise that says the market should reward drive and innovation and generate growth, but that businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road.

Ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves – protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and technology. Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who’s willing to work.

That’s the promise of America – the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper”.
—

Obama is a moderate, centrist liberal: he recognises limits to government, the role of markets, of course . I think he is clearly more willing to make a clear case for the necessary role of government than Clinton was (though Clinton’s agenda was also to ‘reinvent’ and rehabilitate active government, within limts), though Clinton was clearly constrained by having to be more fiscally responsible than Reagan.

In this, he reflects a shift in US opinion, where a majority of voters believe that government should do more, and a minority believe it does too much that should be left to individuals and businesses
http://www.nextleft.org/2008/11/most-americans-want-more-government-not.html

Obama’s core arguments are very recognisable within the American liberal and European social democratic traditions, though he will place his own emphasis on these, particularly around emerging issues of global economic regulation, climate change. An advantage which he has is that his emphasis on “bottom up” movement politics enables him to challenge the idea that the expansion of government involves the growth of bureaucracy for its own sake – he can articulate that it can be a necessary response to popular progressive pressure.

In this, he challenges the facile claim that government action and civic engagement are two alternative approaches, stressing instead how he would seek to link the two (as progressive politics has usually done in all of the major social advances it has achieved in the last century, whether the post-war welfare settlement and or the civilising advance of social liberalism in the last 40 years).

“The Conservatives have oscillated in their response in several ways, but seem to be coming down for fiscal conservatism and smaller government. “

I would say the Tories have always believed in a smaller state and this has long been a dividing line with Labour. The key is freedom. I believe in allowing individuals to the freedom to define their own destiny, to be responsible for their own actions. The role of Govt should be to ensure freedom of opportunity, where possible. Labour believes in fixed outcome and political correctness is used to produce equality of outcome, rather than equality of opportunity.

“all of the calls are for government to do more, not less.”

No, the calls are for Govt to do better. We want it to be more efficient, more accountable and for it to take responsibility.

“This is why even Thatcher and Reagan were unable to reduce government spending and the role of the state, and why the significant increases in public spending over the last decade are very difficult for the smaller state right to reverse.”

That’s because terms of left-wing Govt often leave a country on the verge of bankruptcy. Cutting State employees can be an expensive business. Plus, as with most political debates, the Left are successful at dumbing down opinions, so that State efficiency drives become “starving old ladies” in the left leaning media.

“Labour believes it is sensible to increase debt to put money back into the economy and to fund additional public spending with a counter-cyclical effect. “

Except they have increased the debt in the boom times. They just make it up as they go along and manipulate the figures to fool the naïve and those that want to be fooled.

“Increasingly, Labour is drawing heavier fire from commentators and papers on the right, while centre-left commentators who had previously felt the government has lacked direction have become more positive. That is a price to be paid for having a clearer progressive agenda.”

No, it’s the result of re-forming a powerful media manipulation unit.

“It is fatal to argue against doing this because of media reaction. Indeed, that has been among the central progressive critiques of New Labour: that too much attention has been paid to chasing headlines. Accepting that argument is to close down progressive space, often unnecessarily.”

I agree.

The main theme of this article appears to be the reaction of the Media and the influence it has on political policy. You criticise Labour for developing policy for headlines (correctly, IMO), yet, your confidence in supporting left-wing re-distributive policies is evidently derived from positive media coverage of such policies. This demonstrates the power of the Media and shows your lack of confidence in your own principles.

“your confidence in supporting left-wing re-distributive policies is evidently derived from positive media coverage of such policies”

No – the media coverage in the dominant right-wing press has been negative. It’s the actual *public themselves* who’re enthusiastic about redistributive policies.

Can I just ask a question here? I’ll frame it like this.

It was claimed during the happier times of the early oughties that light regulation was an important feature of attracting and maintaining the City as the pre-eminent global financial capital. This obviously had attractions in the numbers of well paid posts and probably did trickle down to the wine bars and purveyors of fine automobiles. It also, correct me if I am wrong, also assisted greatly in Gordon Browns’ claims for growth.

My question briefly is, if we had not gone for that light regulatory regeime, would we have had a more robust economy that would not have dipped at all, rather than the one we have now. It seems to me unlikely, given that even countries with solid manufacturing bases, such as Germany, are finding the global credit squeeze hard going.

US federal taxes bring in $2.5 trillion a year in revenue, and the US spends $3 trillion (of which $250 billion, already, is interest payments on their debt). If Obama is serious about “a long term plan to not leave a mountain of debt”, he will have to cut the size of government in the 2nd half of a first term. He spends about 3 pages in “Audacity” (just before his visit with Buffett, in the “Opportunity” chapter) saying you can’t have both guns and butter: “At some point, foreigners will stop lending us money, interest rates will go up, and we will spend most of our nation’s output paying them back.” Now, all that is entirely different from how Obama will spend government money. He could be far more activist and interventionist and spend less than Bush.

I for one really hope for the sake of our economic well-being that there is not an economic narrative. ‘Narrative’ is what abolished the 10p tax band and introduced the poll tax before that.

I also think that calling Obama ‘centrist’ is unnecessarily two-dimensional. Beyond saying that he can’t be categorised as for one set of people over another it is meaningless.

Furthermore I laugh whenever anyone eulogises about Steve Richards’ ability to offer insight. Richards is a cosseted parrot who is kept in a guilded cage for not his ability to scratch backs but for his inability to bite back.

Gordon may want us to believe that he is “leading the world”, but he doesn’t appear to be leading Germany.

“Steffen Kampeter, the budget expert in Ms Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union in parliament and a confidant of the chancellor, said: “I see the danger of creating a new bubble. Massive interest rate cuts and massive borrowing may bring about new problems.”

Mr Kampeter attacked the “hectic” crisis management in the US, Britain and France. “How good is a policy package if it has to be changed every other week? How good is it for confidence? The latest British decisions on VAT [value added tax] and income tax, for instance, are inconsistent. Better to wait a bit longer and put forward more durable solutions,” he said.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/67467116-bc25-11dd-80e9-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1

No – the media coverage in the dominant right-wing press has been negative. It’s the actual *public themselves* who’re enthusiastic about redistributive policies.

The Press is not right wing , people are .You go into the shop and there are the Guardian and Mirror , buy them , then the Press will be left wing ? The public are enthusiastic about redistribution ha ha . Redistributing other people’s money to them but not their money to other people natch. They have no interest in redistribution per se at all. Redistribution at the top end will gather no revenues and serves only a symbolic or tactical purpose dupes .
The Institute for Fiscal Studies no less , calculated that the Government would maximise the revenue it collects from those earning over £100,000 by imposing a marginal rate of 55.6 per cent. ,very close to the current marginal rate of 53 per cent charged when income tax, national insurance contributions and indirect taxes are all included.
The IFS concluded that “there is not a powerful case for increasing the income tax rate on the very highest earners, even on redistributive grounds.”
Furthermore the Government’s own Survey of Personal Incomes said the top one per cent of earners receive 11.6 per cent of total pre-tax income, and pay 22 per cent of total income tax .The bottom 25 per cent of earners receive 8.2 per cent of national pre-tax income and pay 2 per cent of the total income tax.
.If there is to be any more redistributing it will have to come not from the relatively tiny number of people at the very pinnacle, but from the vast numbers of people who are in the top half.

Then see how much support there is ..

Newmania,

More people don’t buy newspapers than buy them.

A lot of people have voted Labour or Lib Den though…

“It’s the actual *public themselves* who’re enthusiastic about redistributive policies.”

JB I sense a Yes Minister “balanced sample” moment on this one.

“Fairer sharing of the costs of a downturn. The pre-budget report showed an increased emphasis on this, though Labour’s budgets have always been quietly redistributive.”

An absolutely astonishing assertion.

I have a tendency to get a bit foam-flecked on this subject, so apols in advance. But listen. In 2007, Labour got rid of the 10p band. And claimed that it would hurt no-one. This. Was. A. Lie. Please, I beg you, Sunder, be in no doubt that this was a lie. Anyone with Excel and internet access could have done the calculation to show that actually an awful lot of people would lose out on the day the budget was announced. How do I know? I was a tax adviser at the time and I did that calculation. There is just NO WAY that the Treasury did not contain someone also able to do it. They lied, and they knew it, and they did it because they thought the dropping of the basic rate to 20p would be enough of a sweetener for people not to care (or understand) about the poor sods who were going to lose out. How redistributive is that?

And this PBR is NOT redistributive. Leaving aside for a moment the VAT cut (which is useless to people who have already had to pare their spending back to rent, fuel and food anyway) the HALF-measure to achieve redistribution is the raise in higher rate tax. And what do we see happening at the other end of the scale? Sweet FA.

In order for redistribution to be worthy of the name, that money has to go BACK somewhere, for chrissakes.

It’s not being given back in lower taxes on the lowest paid. It’s being given back in extra top-ups on pensions, winter fuel payments and child benefits – all of which are either very lightly means-tested or not means-tested at all. And in child tax credits, of course, which laughably continue shovelling a couple of hundred quid a year at people earning up to £66k. My mum benefits from two of those measures, and she is very far from being a starving pensioner huddled round a gas fire. Non-means-tested handouts to significant chunks of the population do have the effect of making said population terribly grateful, but it is NOT the way to go about redistribution.

Stick to your belief in the state, if you must, Labourites, but for god’s sake rid yourself of this notion that your party’s leadership is anything like as interested in redistribution and fairness as you are. From observable evidence, they’re interested in maintaining the status quo on which sections of society pay most overall, while gradually increasing their control over the cash flow of those at the bottom end.

“.If there is to be any more redistributing it will have to come not from the relatively tiny number of people at the very pinnacle, but from the vast numbers of people who are in the top half.”

“In the top half” means people earning £23k and upwards. Only 10% of the population earns over 40k. Sure you don’t want to rethink that assertion?

And you can’t relate proportions of total personal incomes to proportions of tax revenue and pretend they’re connected. They don’t tell you anything about the amount of tax (across the board) each individual pays as a proportion of their salary. This is the important measure.

Sorry, that was for Newmania.

Alix I am making the point that the idea that redistribution can come from the fabled “Super rich ” is a lie . At levels even a fair bit below the £150k and above the effect is at the top of the curve already. I am also making the point that in terms of wealth the system is already fiscally redistributive ( and of course it is in many other ways ). I `m sorry the wealthy are not necessarily suffering individually enough for you but that is not the point (or is it ?)
Your percentage about % earning at this or that level is problematical with so many two income homes you will recall the trouble the Liberal got into when they called a teacher and a Policeman “wealthy “
At all events this is the sort of area you have to get into if you want to be seriously redistributive and by all means make your argument . You have to tell people earning the vertiginously huge income of say £40,000 or say £50.£60k between 2 that they do not deserve to keep as much of the money they may feel they work bloody hard for
Good luck with that it will sound especially enticing from an aristocratic multi home owners like Polly Tonybee or Harriet Harman etc. etc. etc.

Hi Sunder

Increasingly, Labour is drawing heavier fire from commentators and papers on the right, while centre-left commentators who had previously felt the government has lacked direction have become more positive. That is a price to be paid for having a clearer progressive agenda. It is fatal to argue against doing this because of media reaction. Indeed, that has been among the central progressive critiques of New Labour: that too much attention has been paid to chasing headlines. Accepting that argument is to close down progressive space, often unnecessarily.

I think this is the strongest bit. My earlier blog post was about narratives rather than the nitty gritty. In many ways I somewhat agree with Alix in that their policies on tax end up doing more harm than good.

But Alix, also remember that it was Labourites leading the fight against the 10p tax thing.

Anyway, Sunder its true that I admonish Labour for chasing headlines and then get annoyed when the media lays into them. ITs true that the right-wing media will keep talking about tax.

But I’ve not yet seen an actual discussion by the PM or Chancellor aimed at ordinary people explaining what they’re doing and why. They’re engaging in these stupid debates with the Tories who have no clue themselves on what to do and are hence trying to divert the issue on to their territory. And NL have fallen directly into that trap.

The YouGov poll was one – I’m not convinced the next one will be that better.It may be in the heartlands that people get the Labour message rather than the Daily Mail one. but where will they get that from? Who is going to explain the narrative to them? I haven’t seen the govt do any of that. right now it looks like they’re just ducking and diving.

“JB I sense a Yes Minister “balanced sample” moment on this one.”

I see your point – haven’t checked the YouGov question (but they’re not normally a Labour-leaning organisation).

Still, I think it’s more populist than misleadingly spun – just as a Tory government craving popularity might bring back hanging or deport all illegal immigrants, because that’s the standard not-very-thought-through-man-on-street perspective on those issues and fits with Tory ideology, the standard not-very-thought-through perspective on “should we stick it to these rich bastards” is “yeah, bring it on”.

(the BNP is the closest we have to an unthinking populist party, and it’d certainly support hanging, deporting illegal immigrants, and soaking the rich.)

Newmania – You’ve hit the nail on the head. Nu lab economic policy has benefited only two groups, the “rich” (which I would define as earning considerably more than £150k, in fact earning is the wrong word, the rich in my view don’t work in the generally accepted sense) and the benefit classes. This is why what used to be called the lower middle class are so bitter. They are on the cusp of the cut off point for most benefits, and yet either well qualified and/or have a strong work ethic which prevents them from giving up on work altogether, even though the financial benefit they get from it is marginal, especially if they have children. The teacher and the policement in your example would get a couple of K a year in tax credits (if they had kids, nothing if they didn’t) in exchange for which the government expects themn to work themselves into the ground and give 30+% of their income to the state, who will duly dole it out to the 16 kid chav family of lard arses on the nearby affordable housing estate to spend on fags, beer and attack dogs.
By no stretch of the imagination can a household with a £40k income be considered rich but labour seems to have decided that they are, given that benefits add up to a salary of around £35k. It’s not that the rich are being taxed too much, as you say there aren’t enough of them to make a difference and they can easily avoid tax anyway, its the PAYE, fixed middle income classes that are taxed too much. Even last weeks pre-budget only benefited 2 groups, single parents, and pensioners. What about the rest of us ?

As soon as I read the words “Nu lab”, or “ZaNuLab”, or whatever, I stop reading.

I’m so bored.

My question briefly is, if we had not gone for that light regulatory regeime, would we have had a more robust economy that would not have dipped at all, rather than the one we have now. It seems to me unlikely, given that even countries with solid manufacturing bases, such as Germany, are finding the global credit squeeze hard going.

My guess is that we would have seen some restrictions on mortgage lending, ie no 125% mortgages, less lending covered by short term borrowing in the money markets, less exposure to the sub-prime market. Maybe greater scrutiny of some of the related derivative products. This would in turn have most likely slowed the housing boom. Therefore although the downturn would still have happened the banking system would not have been so badly hit, with all the related problems, and there would be fewer people in danger of losing their homes.

“remember that it was Labourites leading the fight against the 10p tax thing”

Was it? That’s not what Hansard records.

http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200607/cmhansrd/cm070321/debtext/70321-0006.htm

Ming Campbell
“The Chancellor told us as he sat down, to waves of applause, that he would cut the basic rate of income tax from 22p to 20p. On the face of it, that is a Liberal Democrat proposal and a welcome one. But if one looks carefully, one sees that the revenue to justify that reduction will be obtained from the abolition of the 10p rate. To fund the reduction, income tax will be increased for many taxpayers. One could say that we will be asking the poor to subsidise the rich. That is an example of the sleight of hand that the Chancellor has demonstrated in the past.”

The Labourites who ‘lead the opposition’ to their own party proposals only woke up after their constituents started coming to them to complain when the effect began being seen in wage slips. Methinks you are suffering from media groupthink.

agree with Thomas – the Labour Party only realised the effects of the abolition of the 10p rate one year AFTER it had been announced – it makes you wonder why we bother with a parliament at all.

The point is that this recession will be painful and the Labour Party are still trying to convince the electorate that they are doing their best to prevent the pain, only they are using policies that will exacerbate the pain. Why clobber credit card companies as Mandelson is intent on doing if that will only result in increased credit card debt? Just about every new policy announced by the Government seems intent on worsening the impact of the recession. Darling might even manage to make Anthony Barber seem like a great Chancellor, and that is no compliment. Has anyone wondered built a business plan to set up an opium farm in Afghanistan – it will probably be preferable to living in the UK for the next 10 years.

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was persuading the people that the New Deal ‘worked’:

http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2006/12/president_frank.html

But Sunder has a great ‘narrative’ here and if people believe it (they did last time, perhaps they will again), and assuming that the consequences of this policy don’t go too far and lead to us having to feast on the dead lying in the street, we will come out the other side with a much more powerful state, much less liberty and a bigger, richer political class. And Sunny might be made a commissar despite his initial, unsocialist, doubts:)

Quoting Samizdata; pretending the New Deal was a failure? FFS, are you actually being paid by sinister weird lobbyists, or do you believe the shite you’re spouting…?

(I mean, fuck, the linked piece makes Steven Den Beste seem like a coherent prose stylist with sane opinions…)

Nick spends half his time here quoting Samizdata as if its the Bible. I’m not sure who that is aimed at Nick

Aaron: As soon as I read the words “Nu lab”, or “ZaNuLab”, or whatever, I stop reading.

You should stop when someone says ‘newmania you’ve hit the nail on the head’

The Labourites who ‘lead the opposition’ to their own party proposals only woke up after their constituents started coming to them to complain when the effect began being seen in wage slips

well… my point was that until the Labour backbenchers rebelled, there was little chance of Brown going back, despite Libdem protestations.

@Newmania “vertiginously huge income of say £40,000″ and MM “By no stretch of the imagination can a household with a £40k income be considered rich”

I know. I share your flabberghastedness. I really do. But the fact is, only 10% of the country earns more than £40k. You and I might well agree that £40k seems to us like a barely adequate recompense for, say, being the head of a city school, or being a junior solicitor who is lumbered with all the work their superiors are too lofty to undertake. But we would be wrong. To the majority of the country, it’s an awful lot of money. No amount of instinctive “knowledge” on our part undoes that. We can either legislate in terms of what we “know” to be the case, or we can legislate in terms of the facts.

However, you’d be reading me wrong if you thought I meant by this that therefore we should tax the bastards to buggery. I don’t. But I think recognising the above is a necessary pre-requisite to a sensible discussion of what tax system to adopt. The system I would adopt (if allowed to do it all myself) would actually be a super-evolved version of the current Lib Dem plan. In essence I would like to move to a system of taxing capital much more heavily than income.

I too struggle to see how a household income of £40,000 could be considered rich.

Comfortable, maybe. Rich? No.

It’s true that a lot of people get by on less than half that, but those people might be considered poor. There is a place between poor and rich, it’s called adequate.

No, John, I do this for fun, and to inject an alternative view into this “liberal” discussion. Obviously, more difficult to introduce doubt into your mind on this matter than it is in an area of which I have personal experience (like in our thread on education standards above), but if one or two people follow my links and expand their understanding of possible political theories a little, then it is all worthwhile, even taking into the account the snippets of abuse I get back in response.

I too struggle to see how a household income of £40,000 could be considered rich.

There should be no struggle involved. The term “rich” is essentially a relative one, not absolute. A person living in the UK with an income of £40k per annum is far more wealthy than the vast majority of the people living on the planet by almost every metric you care to use. Even within the UK itself, a household income of £40k is almost twice the national average.

Someone like me — who views extreme inequity in the distribution of wealth to be a fundamentally bad idea — would consider twice the national average to be “rich”. Someone who does not share my position may describe it as only “comfortable”.

Clearly there’s a disagreement, but I don’t struggle to see how someone might consider £40k merely “comfortable”.

Hi Jim,

The national average is around £22k, so you’re right re. the national average.

Yeah, I wouldn’t say that people should struggle on £40k, unless they’ve taken on a large mortgage (which would raise the question as to why?).

The term “rich” is essentially a relative one, not absolute.

Agreed.

A person living in the UK with an income of £40k per annum is far more wealthy than the vast majority of the people living on the planet by almost every metric you care to use.

But they live in the UK, so planetary comparisons don’t amount to much. People in Joburg don’t pay Tunbridge Wells level council taxes.

Even within the UK itself, a household income of £40k is almost twice the national average.

Agreed. But if both parents are working, with an average mortgage (not to mention council taxes and running two cars) and childcare for 2.4 children added, it doesn’t leave you feeling very rich.

Someone like me — who views extreme inequity in the distribution of wealth to be a fundamentally bad idea — would consider twice the national average to be “rich”. Someone who does not share my position may describe it as only “comfortable”.

That depends on whether that’s one earner or two. I made the distinction on saying “household”.

Clearly there’s a disagreement, but I don’t struggle to see how someone might consider £40k merely “comfortable”.

We disagree. It’s adequate, but not rich. I would say that another £20k or £30k would probably put you over the top, but not £40k.

I think people should be wary of accusing £40k families of being rich.

That pretty much encompasses the middle class family – who, let’s be fair, have to buy (or rent) a property in their local vicinity.

Okay they’re not particularity poor, but they’re not “rich” either.

That said: If you’re a single-person (without dependants) earning £40k, then by most measures, you’re pretty well-off.

I don’t think there’s any real disagreement between us, Aaron. I’m not suggesting that those with a household income of £40k per annum spend half their time aboard their yacht and the other half in relaxing at their villa on the shores of Lake Como.

However, I’ve seen real, honest-to-badness poverty in the slums of Cairo and Sao Paulo and have visited East African refugee camps. Prior to entering academia, I spent my twenties working in industrial engineering and specialised in water treatment technologies (note: I earned far more than I gave back during my occasional work on voluntary projects, so I’m not trying to come across as all noble and saint-like).

As a result, I try to point out to people that even a comfortable income in Europe is enough to make a person part of the global rich. I take your point about the cost of living in Tunbridge Wells, but still maintain that the world might just be a better place if we ‘comfortable westerners’ truly appreciated just how privileged we are (materially speaking).

That said, I do acknowledge that things change somewhat if we restrict our comparisons to the UK (or European) population, though I question the legitimacy of doing so, as long as many of the natural resources from which the wealthy nations derive their wealth are sourced from ‘developing’ nations whose corrupt regimes guarantee (with our knowledge and complicity) that their own populations continue to live in poverty.

But even in the UK, it’s worth pointing out that the average household income (not individual) is around £24,350 (or was in 2006 according to the Consumer Payments Survey I discovered with a web search). So £40k / year is still a significant step up from that. Is it enough to make a person “rich”?

Well, that’s an argument over definitions. I’d argue that it is, though obviously you disagree. Fair enough, there’s no disagreement over the facts, merely the words we use to express them. So there’s not real point in arguing about it.

Jim,

I’m not looking for an argument, seriously I’m not.

You make some good points. And I’m not some closeted Tunbridge Wells resident either, I’ve lived and worked in Eastern Europe and in Asia – as far a way as China.

I agree that comparative concerns make European living unsustainable (globally).

But, at the end of the day, that’s not an argument that democracy will suffer.

But, at the end of the day, that’s not an argument that democracy will suffer.

Agreed. Which is why I’m not a democrat. Though that’s definitely a discussion for another time and place!

Agreed. Which is why I’m not a democrat. Though that’s definitely a discussion for another time and place!

Well I’m a democrat. But please, keep reading. I’m sure our horns will lock on more relevant threads.