More than 85% of fraud allegations made by the public over the last five years were false, according to figures obtained by the Observer.
A freedom of information request to the Department for Work and Pensions discloses that between 2010 and 2015 the government closed 1,041,219 alleged cases of benefit fraud put forward by the public. Insufficient or no evidence of fraud was discovered in 887,468 of these. In 2015 alone, of the 153,038 cases closed by the DWP's Fraud and Error Service, 132,772 led to no action.
In this context comment from Owen Smith, the shadow work and pensions secretary who I hold in high regard, seems appropriate. He said:
Where there are abuses of the system they should be dealt with swiftly. However, the government's constant attempts to paint honest people — like low-paid workers relying on tax credits and universal credit — as ‘skivers' is creating a hostile and accusatory environment. The Tories should view these results with shame and pledge to turn the page on their divisive rhetoric.
I doubt that they will. Take this from a book review by Andrew Sabisky for the Adam Smith Institute this January:
The Welfare Trait has thus far attracted little media attention. This is perhaps a mercy. Were it to do so, its author, Dr Adam Perkins, would no doubt be forced to confront a howling hate mob outside his office twenty-four hours a day. Perhaps he would even have to move to an East Asian university, which these days is the usual route taken by European eccentrics (such as Nick Land and Neven Sesardic) who are determined to make fools of themselves in public by uttering unpalatable truths.
Painstakingly, Perkins constructs his core argument: that the welfare state, the foundational institution of modern Britain (the Church of England having sadly declined), contains the seeds of its own eventual destruction. A large body of evidence, which Perkins reviews, supports the intuitive idea that habitual welfare claimants tend to be less conscientious and agreeable than the average person. Such habitual claimants also tend to reproduce at higher rates than the general population, a pattern found across nations and time periods. They also seem to adjust their fertility in response to changes in the generosity of welfare provision, having fewer children in times of austerity and more when governments turn on the spigot marked “spending”.
Over time, therefore, the work motivation of the general population is lowered. This occurs through both genetic and environmental channels. Personality traits are substantially heritable (meaning that a decent percentage of the variation in these traits is due to naturally occurring genetic variation). Given this fact, habitual welfare claimants with employment-resistant personalities are likely to have offspring with similar personalities.
What you see in this is the deliberate construction of an argument that those on benefits are genetically different from other people. The consequences that follow are inevitable and were all too apparent in the 1930s. And this comes from a UK think tank much beloved for Tory politicians.
Worry, a great deal.
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Chilling. I did this piece about disability hate propaganda four years ago:
http://tim-theregency.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/nazi-uk-2010s-v-nazi-germany-1930-valid.html
How things are unfolding are indeed comparable to the 1930s. Unfortunately, some people demand to see tanks, swastikas and goose-stepping armies before they will recognise that.
As a country, we should be very concerned about where we are heading.
This has long been the Tory attitude. Churchill attended Eugenics conferences and believed absolutely in a cast society driven by apparent genetically superior social betters.
It has made me almost physically sick to read, but I will get to the end of this article. One thing that is particularly nauseating is the slowness of the EU process which is supposed to be coming to our rescue — it gives Cameron plenty of time to get the human rights laws changed for the UK, and to inflict as much damage to the vulnerable as he pleases.
Sounds as though the Adam Smith Institute has been infected by Lysenkoism! Some irony, considering Lysenko “canonised” by Stalin, whose favourite scientist he was.
I’m sorry to say that this sounds like nonsense on stilts, worthy of the scientists in Gulliver’s Travels who sought to extract sunshine from cucumbers.
More directly , it is bollocks, and extremely dangerous bollocks at that. We really DO seem to be replaying the 1929 to 1933 and beyond scenario, so WHERE is our FDR?
Seems to be in America still – we’re still waiting for ours to stop cringing before the media.
The Adam Smith Institute itself seems to exist to pursue the deification of economics writer Adam Smith. Unlike others of his time, open about removing commoners from the Commons specifically so they could be exploited, Smith would have had us believe, as others still would today, that this movement of peoples from independent livelihoods in tune with the land into wage-dependency in grim factories came about as a result of invisible hands waving around and similar airy-fairy nonsense. This was and is all part of the ongoing attempt to portray money as a resource, not the simple product it is.
We should expect nothing else from this Institute, then, and from what I read I believe it’s fair to suggest the fantasist Adam Perkins should probably book that passage to East Asia. His card is marked.
I think that is unkind to Smith
But maybe not too much-there was strong linkage at the end of the century between the laws of commerce and the laws of nature and God. Indeed, Edmund Burke (now revived by Tories such as Jesse Norman) regarded commerce to be connected with the deity and regarded the poor as those that should be happy with what God has deemed necessary to withdraw from them. Burke was a ‘fan’ of Smith. His view of the State was that:
‘That the State ought to confine itself to what regards the State, or the creatures of the State, namely, the exterior establishment of its religion; its magistracy; its revenue; its military force by sea and land; the corporations that owe their existence to its fiat; in a word, to every thing that is truly and properly public, to the public peace, to the public safety, to the public order, to the public prosperity.’
I accept this has to be seen in its historical context and the horrors of the French Revolution.
My Sergeant-Major claimed I deserved a medal, the Distinguished Skiving Order for skiving beyond the call of duty. I liked to point out to him, diplomatically, that if they paid the National Servicemen a proper amount and fed them decently it might be different. The drive to a low wage economy inevitably means that at the point of balance with benefits then it will affect attitudes. As for genes we are all different but also much the same.
Although we are born with inherited genes, the study of epiigenetics shows that genes can be turned on and off and that environmental issues such as poor diet, stress will affect us badly. We are more than our genes and to have good nutrition, a purpose, to be nurtured, valued will help turn off disease markers. Quite a fascinating subject. Bring back school domestic science, not just for girls. It has to be said though that good nutrition costs, for those on low incomes in work or out it is a struggle.
Sylvia-I suspect that in another 100 years scientists will be looking back at this era of genetic determinism as a phase that did disservice to its subject. Biologist Steven Rose described this sort of thing as being on the level of Roman Auguries where the Auspex would luck into the entrails of a sacrificed animal for insights into the nature of events.
I’m happy to say that a certain amount of home economics is compulsary in schools up to second year secondary school, I can also say I’m delighted my 13 year old son has chosen it as a subject to do for an N5 qualification.
Toby Young at the Spectator had something to say about it too!
These articles raise so many questions about some people’s mindset and morality it is hard to know where to start. I certainly won’t be adding the book to my reading list!
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/tell-the-truth-about-benefit-claimants-and-the-left-shuts-you-down/
When reading the Spectator article again I noticed the book is focused on “individuals with aggressive, rule-breaking and anti-social tendencies”
Dr Perkins expertise would perhaps be better targeted at the culture of the banking, legal, accounting, tax advisors and political professions for prime examples of these personality traits.
Oh I forgot, such studies are not to be encouraged in polite society!
The ignorance of that Spectator article by Toby Young is incredible-what worries me more is the economic ignorance of Dr. Perkins who says at the end of the article: ‘‘But I felt I owed it to the taxpayers who are funding the welfare state to publish these data.’’
Well if that’s not ideology-laden I don’t know what is-if Perkins ‘scientific objectivity’ is of such on order that he can’t be bothered to even get his facts right about taxation then it seems unlikely he’s reliable anywhere else. For a scientist to utter such an ideology-laden statement as fact is quite breathtaking -he’s a politician not a scientist.
Problem is the rich who are truly living off the rest of us are painfully attuned to the idea that people take and see it everywhere like a psychotic twitch.
This is extremely worrying. Capitalism makes a mockery of lives and ambition and then points the finger at ‘inadequacies’. Scary how determined and deep-rooted free-market ideology is and if it can glibly talk this way we must dread what it does not tell us.
I’m sure Adam Smith would not approve of this in his name. I’m fairly sure he didn’t even advocate limited liability because he foresaw capitalists using it to damage structure and ignoring a sensible boundary in risk calculation for personal gain.
Good lord.
We have a posts on this blog comparing Tory attitudes to those of the Fascist Nazi states and here we have what seems to be the beginning of a theory of eugenics concerning welfare claimants to suit the needs of a rabid austerity-mad Tory party!
So the evidence is being accrued!!
I agree that Adam Smith himself would not have fallen for this. He would have quite rightly looked at the range of production activity in the country and then cross referenced that with the rate benefit claimants.
My view is that he would have found areas where there was low economic activity have higher benefit claims. These would be areas where the first years of Thatcherism would have laid waste. The useful idiot who wrote this trash would not have considered that – but you seldom weigh up evidence when all you are trying to do is to justify your own prejudices and also dehumanise a group of people you don’t like.
Danny Dorling has done a lot of excellent work on this – but just gets vilified by the Right.
Eugenics isn’t so much beginning as ‘never stopped’. As a disabled woman I am howled down every time I try to tell people about the forced abortions, foced sterilisations, forced adoptions and coercion employed to prevent ordinary s#disabled people from ‘breeding.’For once I don’t feel well enough to cover this issue in depth because even as a Masters graduate there is only so much one can take of the ‘just world’ blinkers that people put on rather than face the truth.
Because we are taught that abortion is a ‘woman’s right to choose’ we dare not look too closely at what that ideology is used for where minority groups are concerned. https://ladycrookback.wordpress.com/2014/10/20/choice-is-optional/
Then you have people like this: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tory-deputy-mayor-owen-lister-558677
Surely it is long established that it is both Nature and Nurture – not either or, and brains are plastic (as it were!). But now it is seriously argued that we are hardwired for unemployment, skiving and welfare benefits or, presumably by the same token, also for Chief Executive, Doctor or even Prime Minister. The logical conclusion from this must be why bother with education at all? The state does most of it and it is so very expensive.
At least former members of the Bullingdon Club will be well placed to give us the benefit of their educated conclusions.
Some irony if one put forward the notion of scrutinising the genetic mindset of the elite. A thousand years of barons becoming industrialist becoming financiers, encompassing selected marriage, public school indoctrination and the notion of ‘ones’ betters’ could open debate about an unfair society being in the blood.
Not encouraging that debate by the way nor implying it’s a valid route to take, simply suggesting that if one side of the coin is ‘examined’then the other side that certainly won’t be might have more apparent relevance. But whereas one is suggestecd to be ‘acceptable moral scrutiny’the other would no doubt be ‘unacceptable moral wrong’.
Adam Smith would turn in his grave. So much of what we wrote has been twisted by nut cases. He saw clear limits on the private sector’s ability to allocate resources effectively, especially utility-like assets or public goods; he thought division of labour was dehumanising; he actually only used his “invisible hand” phrase once and in context of protectionism, not to unconditionally glorify the market. He mistrusted mangers of plc’s ( and the joint stock company in general) in an early warning of the “principal / agent” problem. He was a man of morals and of The Enlightenment. The Adam Smith Institute strikes me as anything but enlightened, and borderline psychotic in their aversion to any interference to the market’s workings.
The more you think about the application of socio/genetic memes towards those who claim state benefits, the more you realise that the “genetically abnormal” mindset applies more to those who, while possessing power and money, still utilise the benefits of state and the labour of others to enrich themselves further.
While they insist that people who claim benefits must, by their definition, be of lower intelligence or ability, a more reasoned view would be that the rich and powerful who use the same resource can best be described as sociopaths.
Richard: LSE “Censorship” row see http://beaveronline.co.uk/13553-2/
Just to set the record straight as regards disability campaigners’ position for Black Triangle Campaign
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/feb/19/disability-activists-say-lse-wrong-to-shelve-welfare-lecture
It’s amazing the number of inaccuracies and spin that has been put out over this story. Students had absolutely nothing to do with it for a start, as you correctly point out. None of it has been corrected and only the journalist from The Guardian bothered to approach Black Triangle for comment.
Such is the sea of propaganda that disabled human rights activists in the UK face daily: we are literally drowning in it.
Far from denying Dr. Perkins’ a voice – it is we who have been denied any platform, wrongly accused of holding a position inimical to a free and open society and, yet again, marginalised and demonised whilst Perkins has shamelessly exploited this incident to promote his book.
And people wonder why we feel it necessary to speak out?
It’s a strange world, this right-wing, Tory Britain in which we struggle to survive.
The first link shows the cover of the book which had me reeling with disgust as it seems to suggest that the author is cashing in on the aftermath of 5 years of Tory propaganda on this issue. Utterly shameless. I’m glad Black Triangle made the point that free speech of the author should be protected.
Well, people with genetic disabilities who claim disability benefit are genetically different. That is almost tautological.
However, what the article claims (in typical clickbait fashion) is that the ASI believes these statements. What the ASI is doing is giving a book review. The ASI does not, in the cited review, explicitly condone or condemn the claims made in this webpage.
You think that is not condoning?
Jon – the author of the review makes it clear he/she considers Perkins to ‘among those who are determined to make fools of themselves in public by uttering unpalatable truths’.
Clearly the review regards this characterisation of those on benefits as ‘an unpalatable truth.’ Could it be clearer?
The review, and the blog commentary makes no mention of the disabled. Consequently that is a straw man argument Jon.
Even if that were the case that particular comment implicitly assumes that all people born with disabilities are born that way as a result of natural genetic disorders. Consequently there is no recognition of the creation of genetic disability at birth in that implicit assumption of artificially created environmental factors which could be anything from harmful pollutants dumped into the food chain as an externality of the process of Capitalism; harmful chemicals and hormones deliberately injected into the food chain lobbied for under so called free trade agreements and de regulation; or lethal toxins such as depleted uranium from weapons ordnance. Not to mention stress factors from lack of access to the resources necessary to thrive.
Now my view is that if a half wit like me can figure this out anyone should be capable of spotting it. Which leaves one wondering whether the failure to do so is down to sheer bone idleness or some natural or artificially produced disability in the thinking department?
Oh, look, a plank! Someone take it away before someone uses it as a platform!
Go away, learn to analyse the English language before you comment on what condoning means!
“A large body of evidence, which Perkins reviews, supports the intuitive idea that habitual welfare claimants tend to be less conscientious and agreeable than the average person.”
There is actually a germ of a point in all that, but it is very ill-made.
And again you can determine who those are, and therefore what help they need to function in society, once you have enough jobs for all.
Until you do that, you are tarring people all with the same brush, and you are still demonising people who actually need significant social care intervention.
It’s just like what happened when we instigated the NHS. We had no idea how much actual hidden illness there was out there until the mechanism was put in place to fix it. The amount that showed up was staggering and nearly swamped the NHS in its first years.
“less conscientious and agreeable than the average person.”
As someone on benefits and someone who has met many others on benefits and who has worked and lived in different countries, I strongly suspect that these’traits are fairly well distributed. The socio-linguist Basil Bernstein made some interesting observations about language use and socio-economic class. In the case of ‘better educated’ people, middle-class and so-forth, underlying aggressive and disagreeable behaviour can be hidden behind linguistic skills and manipulative use of language. People living from one generation to another in run-down environments; made to feel utter failures by the mores of a culture of financial success; hounded by the vagaries of a precarious job market yet ‘told’ to chase ‘the dream’ and now treated like shit at Job Centres by people equally stressed and in fear following a Government language-framing programme designed to project contempt and loathing on to them……well, they might end up being pissed off and a mite surly now and again.
Add to this the UTTER FAILURE of the Left to find the struggling in our society a real, potent voice.
Simon,
It would also be useful if those spouting this pseudo scientific hogwash stopped playing fast and loose with the term “welfare” in which the concept is painted as exclusive to the less affluent.
The level of welfare enjoyed by corporations and wealthy individuals from direct and indirect subsidies, tax breaks and reliefs, tax avoidance, underwriting of pension contributions, sweetheart tax deals, guaranteed profit levels from decades long PFI deals etc etc means that any reasonable science based analysis has to apply the same standards and criteria to these welfare recipients to be credible.
Otherwise any claims are meaningless and evidence of the most crass ideological bias.
I have long thought that very few people at the ASI can have read the Wealth of Nations, let alone Theory of Moral Sentiments. I suspect that if Smith were alive he would be suing them for misrepresentation. He recognised the dangers of an unfettered commercial world long before Marx got there.
The persistent, deliberate denigration (and expansion) of an ‘underclass’ by a self selecting elite is becoming ever more fascistic and I don’t use that term lightly. The convergence of political power and commercial interests….
Somehow Adam Smith’s invisible hand which supposedly ensured “nearly the same distribution of the necessities of life” seems to have got lost along the way in developing the current form of capitalism?
As it’s all gone so wrong, it must be time for a change!
“The rich only select from the heap what is most precious and agreeable. They consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species.”
This is chilling:
‘“What no one seemed to notice,” said a colleague of mine, a philologist, “was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing to do with knowing one is governing.
What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. …
This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.
’They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945′ — Milton Mayer University of Chicago Press. Reissued in paperback, April, 1981.
This time it’s “banks not tanks”.
“Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.” Herman Melville (1819 – 1891). Plus ça change!
It this is true – BIG if – then surely the immediate consequence is that the people on benefit are disabled and therefore more qualified to receive benefit?
Indeed
I hope the ASI might acknowledge that if they choose to reply, as I rather hope they do
This way of thinking goes keeps re-surfacing in the tory party. See http://www.theguardian.com/politics/wintour-and-watt/2010/nov/25/conservatives-davidcameron. This article mentions a speech by Keith Joseph in 1974 in which he expressed similar ideas, but it also mentions that this speech killed of Keith Joseph’s hopes of reaching the top!
If I remember Howard Flight then entered the House of Lords.
I love the idea that this can be ‘proved’ by the fact that claimants’ spending increases in proportion to the amount of money they have to spend. Well, derrr!
This sort of thinking would have been entirely familiar to Adam Smith in his day, back when the poor were considered a breed apart and to breed in response to handouts (see Malthus’ criticsms of the poor relief of his day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speenhamland_system#Criticisms ). Sadly it seems we have not moved on.
You’re right John some things have barely changed since the introduction of the Poor Laws, including the complete lack of moral principles underlying current Tory policies.
As long as we have farmyard economic thinking nothing will change, for example:
– where human animals are only considered for the value they can deliver to the farmer in the market
– where the cost of human animal labour must continually be lowered in order to maximise the return for the farmer
– where the human weak, sick, elderly or just plain “excess to market requirement” are a burden to the farmer that must be removed from the process at the lowest possible cost
We as a society have changed very little from the days of Malthus and the Poor Laws, and only where the farmers have been forced to concede a few extra grains of food in order to meet polite society’s need for some slight semblance of respectability.
Other than that the farmyard economic model is still very much alive and kicking in the Tory party today.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/29/disabled-people-challenge-bedroom-tax-at-supreme-court
I was told by a person on a train recently that “we just can’t afford all our old people”
I asked what he meant and he said “those who have not made provision for themselves will just have to take the consequences”
And he really meant exactly what you think that might imply
From the ‘professional classes’, I should add
The lack of comprehension and compassion is truly astounding, such values appear to have been removed from so many apparently well educated people by years of heartless social indoctrination. A true “farmer”!
That guy is in for one hell of a shock:
https://www.socialeurope.eu/2016/02/here-are-the-new-social-risks-of-the-fourth-industrial-revolution/
Here we have Eugenics 2.0 and the evil elite trying to construct rationale for discrimination and dehumanisation of certain groups within society. This is the first few footsteps on a path, which leads ultimately to the extermination of groups of people that the elites deem to be undesirable.
Yes this is re-run of “out of control elites” and the 1920s and 1930s. “The useful idiot” Andrew Sabisky should be sent on a crash course in epigenetics!
He won’the so bloody cocky about things when an intelligent computer system is doing his job.
I’m not sure the computer would need to be very “intelligent” to replace a large number of the so-called professions, certainly at the lower end of the professions this is happening already.
Repeating an established mantra is easily codified so really why do you really need an accountant, lawyer, banker, doctor, teacher, etc… to undertake routine tasks when a computer does this naturally.
Those at the top of their professions already will probably be paid more to be the system programmers and administrators, while those trying to climb the ladder will be expected to be interns, adjuncts, part time and on zero hours contracts.
If it’s good enough for the working class to be treated this way, then it must also be true for the middle classes too. Only the biggest apes at the top of the jungle think they are safe (but they do have a shock coming when they realise that apes and humans do actually think differently!).
Welcome to real capitalism, free from the protections that an education was supposed to guarantee! A truly dystopian globalised future that has been slowly developing and eating away at all societies across the world.
This is a massive issue almost no one is building into their economic models
This was very clear in discussion I took part in when in the US last week: the impact on tax is very significant
It may not be actual computers replacing these professions, rather, the blockchain. Either way, they’ll still go so either we all die off or we bring in basic income. I’m sure the plan is for us to die off but from what I’m seeing on the forums lately, that just ain’t gonna happen.
Minimum income guarantees have to be the answer: a universal basic income
Like Richard Murphy, I run into people who say, “Why do we have these people?” Ironically, the people saying this to me, a 30 something who is a wheelchair user, as elderly people who believe that the people we need to dispose of are ‘those children’ [with disabilities]
I am so sorry
why do they always forget to mention the fact that monetarist economics requires a quantity of unemployed people in order to suppress wages and inflation,and the fact that there are approx 25% of working age not in employment (around 8 million-includes 1.7 million jobseekers) with around 0.7 million job vacancies?
How long have we had a welfare state?
How long is that in human generations?
How many generations does it take for genetic change to become evident?
I note it’s also predicated on the idea that families on welfare at a given moment will have children who will be on welfare when they grow up and so on: the “three generations of worklessness” – which nobody has actually been able to find real-world examples of.
Whatever way you look at it this is a recipe for seismic economic, social and political upheaval. I just hope it doesn’t involve chaos and mayhem in transition. We’ve reached a critical juncture in history again. I fear the very worst for ‘vulnerable’ people.
Now, please tell me I’m wrong and why I’m wrong.
http://www.etui.org/Publications2/Working-Papers/Digitalisation-of-the-economy-and-its-impact-on-labour-markets
You aren’t
This is going to happen
When we see comments such as,
” the creation of genetic disability at birth (err- genetics _or_ congenital disability surely not both?)
…. in that implicit assumption of artificially created environmental factors which could be anything from harmful pollutants dumped into the food chain as an externality of the process of Capitalism; harmful chemicals and hormones deliberately injected into the food chain lobbied for under so called free trade agreements and de regulation; or lethal toxins such as depleted uranium from weapons ordnance. Not to mention stress factors from lack of access to the resources necessary to thrive.
Now my view is that if a half wit like me can figure this out anyone should be capable of spotting it. Which leaves one wondering whether the failure to do so is down to sheer bone idleness or some natural or artificially produced disability in the thinking department?”
Yes, of course, stupidity must also be equated to disability! Bash disabled people in a piece about bashing disabled people? Mmm?
The sooner people realise that we are a combination of the spiritual and the material the better. All this selfish gene stuff applies to the machine we (spirits) exist in and thats all. As the mind and temperament are within the spirit not the machine then these notions of being less agreeable and more conscientious have got nothing to do with genetics anyway.
In Saudi Arabia only 30% of men work like we do every day as they didn’t form a mindset of having to do that like we do. That’s why government can get away with acting so strict, as oil money is shared out to everybody, instead of like here where only Eton school friends give each other top jobs. Most of Saudi Arabia workers come from other countries.
When Saudi Arabia said their army were going to attack another country, everybody asked what country they were going to contract it out to.
Royal family who live in unimaginable
What does that say about royal family who live in unimaginable luxury off tax payers money? Kate Middleton has never had a job yet she needs a nanny and housekeeper to look after her own children.
Here’s what the real Adam Smith thought about nature and nurture:
“The difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions, when grown up in maturity, is not upon many occasions so much the cause, as the effect of the division of labour. The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.”
Smith The Wealth of Nations, Vol 1 Bk 1, ch.ii
I do wish those Adam Smith Institute stooges would do their homework.
best regards
Andrew Sayer
Nurture then, not genetics
Anyone hear start the week on this yesterday? Oliver James was very good
Adam Smith was a ‘real’ thinker what we have now is dogma and groupthink-the ability to detect bullshit seems to have been wiped out by some quirk of evolution -let Dr. Perkins explain that one!
You mean a sort of self reference exercise?