It seems Nick Clegg has set his heart on being the new face of uncaring nastiness. In advance of the LibDem conference next week he has said, according to the Guardian:
Welfare should not be there "to compensate the poor for their predicament" but act as "an engine of mobility".
"A fair society is not one in which money is simply transferred by the central state from one group to another”
"Welfare needs to become an engine of mobility, changing people's lives for the better, rather than a giant cheque written by the state to compensate the poor for their predicament.”
"Instead of turning the system from a 'safety net' into a 'trampoline', as Labour promised, people have been stuck on benefits, year in, year out."
A fair society, he wrote, was "one in which people are able to make a better life for themselves, with support from government and the broader community".
This is extraordinary.
Has Clegg not noticed that the disparity between those seeking work and the number of jobs available exceeds more than 2 million people right now?
Has Clegg no faith in the power of community — and the local — where people live their lives — and that most people have no desire to be mobile and cannot flourish if they do?
Has Clegg not noticed that the misfortune of poverty is in no small part randomly allocated — and few choose it?
Has he not noticed that the vast majority do not choose poverty — it is inflicted upon them?
Does he really believe that one of the richest economies in the world has no duty to redistribute wealth because the market always reallocates it upwards — so breaking down the cohesion that is essential in society?
Does Clegg really think the sole role of the state is to force people into any work the market offers — right or wrong?
It seems the answer to all these questions is yes?
This is the nastiness of the Orange Book liberals — the nastiness I encountered when engaging with Giles Wilkes of Lib Dem think tank Centre Forum before he became a ministerial special adviser (and no doubt, inspiration for such sentiments of Clegg’s). This is the Manchester School of liberal thinking:
The general term "Manchester School" has been used to refer to radical liberalism/libertarianism in economic policy: laissez-faire, free trade, government withdrawal from the economy, and an optimistic stress on the "harmonious" effects of free enterprise capitalism. As a result, the school's nature is largely "political" rather than purely "economic".
And this is and always has been nasty in its social impacts — where the optimism fails and exploitation begins, and none of which if far removed from the American Tea Party movement.
No wonder the Lib Dems are floundering in the polls.
No wonder the rump of the SDP within it — Mike Hancock, Charles Kennedy, Bob Russell is looking ever more likely to defect to Labour.
And no wonder more and more will turn against this government when they see their friends and families cats into poverty by attitudes like this — attitudes so far removed from the realities needed to address the economic crisis we have — and which the ConDems will make worse.
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“No wonder the rump of the SDP within it — Mike Hancock, Charles Kennedy, Bob Russell is looking ever more likely to defect to Labour.” Do you have any evidence for that assertion? Thought not.
I’m afraid this article simply reads as a string of ad hominem arguments – Clegg disagrees with you on the best way to use Welfare payments to increase social mobility, therefore he is ‘uncaring’ and ‘nasty.’ QED.
In some towns in the UK men have been long term unemployed since Thatcher was responsible for taking away their livelihood.
There are many, many pensioners living in poverty who are incapable of becoming mobile (sic). They paid NIC whilst working.
Similarly there are people too sick to work – DLA is a notoriously difficult benefit to get. How exactly is the government going to help them make their lives better then?
All of these groups are deserving of some compensation for their predicament – they were not self imposed. In a civilised society that’s what we do – help those who can’t help themselves.
As for: “A fair society is not one in which money is simply transferred by the central state from one group to another” Then why did we do it for the bankers?
Try to catch IDS on youtube claiming he doesn’t recognise the figure of 4bn that Osborne is reportedly going to slash from the welfare budget. It’s linked in an article in left foot foward. His assistant sitting behind actually grimaces when he says it. Worth watching.
Sir,
Many holders of Lehman Brothers debt and equities would be astonished to find out that:
the market always reallocates it upwards
@Kenneth
If you owned Lehman debt or equity the market had already done its job in redistributing to you
“And this [Manchester Liberalism] is and always has been nasty in its social impacts”
Given that the origins of Manchesterism were in a movement to fight the Corn Laws, a particularly socially pernicious piece of state interventionism, I think that’s a fairly desperate claim.
This comment has been deleted. It failed the moderation policy noted here. http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/comments/. The editor’s decision on this matter is final.
@Paul Lockett
I find it sickening that you can say I’m desperate when I point to the outcome of Manchester Liberalism and the harm it can, has and will cause when you can utterly ignore that harm
What sort of person is so obsessed with the mad dogma or libertarianism that thye can ignore human plight for pursuit of nitpicking
The answer is, of course, a libertarian
You, like some others, are fast heading for the automatic delete button without explanation being offered
@Richard Murphy
I think Paul was pointing out that even if the Liberalism you decry has had pernicious social consequences, the effects of alternative means of economic organisation are often worse.
Brilliant article. Absolutely spot on.
I live in Manchester and have a nutty Lib Dem MP that’s PPS to Nick Clegg. If I get another one of his leaflets campaigning against building social housing I’ll scream.
@Matt
Shout
Shout
And shout again!
@Daragh McDowell
And I’m saying that’s a) wrong and b) deliberately avoiding the real issue
As libertarians always do
@Richard Murphy
OK, but I think that’s quite unfair. To be clear – I think Libertarianism is a bit ridiculous as far as political philosophies go. But I’m not prepared to simply declare every Libertarian uncaring and nasty – many such as Will Wilkinson are very concerned by issues of equality and social justice but have different ideas on how it can be achieved. And I don’t think Social Democrats (or Liberals, or Libertarians) have an absolute monopoly on truth. Furthermore, you impart a lot of views to Clegg based on one statement which I don’t think he or the Lib Dems have. A statement like “A fair society is not one in which money is simply transferred by the central state from one group to another” does not rule out redistribution per se. It simply says there are a) other means of doing so other than state re-allocation b) other ways of redistributing wealth rather than direct transfers (such as investing in education, reducing the tax burden on lower earners etc.) Now you may disagree with these methods and that’s your right. But simply taking one statement and using it to declare Clegg ‘uncaring and nasty’ is both ad hominem, and a bit similar to the ‘nitpicking’ you frequently decry from your commenters.
@Daragh McDowell
Oh come on…
One comment?
It was deliberate statement in an article in The Times
That was not a mistake
@Richard Murphy
I repeat – “A fair society is not one in which money is simply transferred by the central state from one group to another” does not rule out redistribution per se. Its about HOW redistribution occurs and how social mobility is encouraged. That’s all. You may DISAGREE with how that is done, but that doesn’t mean Clegg is an ogre.
@Daragh McDowell
Oh come on
Don’t take a line out of context – what you accused me of – which I did ot do – and build your argument on it
Let’s look at the line welfare should not be there “to compensate the poor for their predicament” and agree that either a) he’s a fool to say it b) he’s an ogre to think it c) he’s simple seeking to commit political suicide.
@Richard Murphy
He didn’t say welfare should not be there “to compensate the poor for their predicament”, he said
welfare should not be there “to compensate the poor for their predicament” but act as “an engine of mobility”. A fairly blase statement that I think most reasonable people would interpret as intending to mean the state should try to use social welfare payments as a means of elevating the earning power and income of individuals to the point that they no longer require them. That is – Clegg objects to people being so poor for the entirety of their life that they require welfare payments for the entirety of their life, and thinks government should do something to help them be less poor and that social mobility should be, on the whole, made less difficult. This is, I would argue, a fairly uncontroversial political sentiment to the point that I would challenge you to find any significant political party prepared to disagree with it.
@Daragh McDowell
I hope I would
What he meant was forcing people into the market and ignoring their social networks
You won’t win
His argument was ludicrously unacceptable
Which is why it was rightly picked up on – and hardly just by me
@Richard Murphy
“What he meant was forcing people into the market and ignoring their social networks” – what do you mean by ‘forcing’ people into the market. Most people I would argue, want to work. And frankly, especially in a recessionary economy, those that can work should and thus contribute tax revenues to fund welfare for those that can’t. And as someone who studies a bit of network theory myself, the wonderful thing about social networks is that they are regenerative – people can rebuild and reconfigure their networks. Equally there are plenty of free or almost free services that allow people to preserve their networks even if they are physically transplanted from their hubs. Finally, I fail to see an argument based on either sound economics or social justice for encouraging citizens to remain in areas where there is insufficient economic activity to provide employment when there may be other areas where there is a labour shortage.
As you may have guess from my name, I’m Irish. Economic migration is kind of our thing – and that goes as much for professional as well as labouring classes. Even prior to the advent of electronic communications, we managed to recreate and recombine networks and support systems pretty well, even after crossing the Atlantic. I’m pretty sure economic migrants within the UK with its highly developed transit and communications network will do fine.
“You won’t win” – Perhaps you could encourage your comments section to be a forum for exchange of ideas, not a battleground for ‘winning’ arguments.
“His argument was ludicrously unacceptable” – I disagree entirely.
@Daragh McDowell
Yes, I’ve got an Irish passport too: note the name. So what? Does that excuse your indifference and that of Clegg to the importance of the human condition in the name of free market dogma? I don’t think so.
@Richard Murphy
“Does that excuse your indifference and that of Clegg to the importance of the human condition in the name of free market dogma”
What are you talking about? You’re making very sweeping assertions about my political and economic beliefs and engaging in quite a few ad hominems to avoid actually engaging with someone else’s ideas. The point I made about being Irish was not to excuse anything, simply to note that both my parents and my generation experienced massive emigration from our state in the face of economic hardship (I’ve more friends moving to Australia than I’d care to count.) Some of them wanted to go, some of them have to go, ALL of them have been to build new lives for themselves and have often been quite happy.
Its a nice trick simply accusing your opponents of being uncaring ogres who are indifferent to human suffering because they disagree with you. But it tends to turn off people (like me) who are very open to your ideas on taxation and the welfare state and would like to be able to discuss them with reference to alternatives. If you want to simply attack people who disagree with you as being, by definition, nasty dogmatists fine. But it tends to feed into popular perceptions of the left (which I broadly count myself as being a part of, if in a different wing from you) as being utterly intellectually intolerant and terrified of new ideas.
@Daragh McDowell
Sorry – you feel aggrieved – but I do not think it acceptable to say that past treatment of the Irish justifies current treatment of others
Far from being intolerant of new ideas that is what I spend my time generating – that’s why, I presume, others don’t like what I do
It’s Clegg who is stuck in the mind set of the past – the sale of a defunct economist
@Richard Murphy
“but I do not think it acceptable to say that past treatment of the Irish justifies current treatment of others”
I never said that! Or anyything like that. I simply said that Irish people emigrated, had their social networks disrupted and rebuild and regenerated them. That is – I think your arguments about how the ‘human condition’ demands that we divert large amounts of state resources to welfare payments in economically depressed areas so that people don’t have to move is bunkum. I can also show you a wealth of social science research showing insofar that human happiness is related to economic activity, people are more happy when they have fulfilling meaningful work that allows them to have a greater control over their individual destinies.
Now I could make a similar straw-man out of your arguments and declare that I am morally superior because I want a welfare system that allows people greater independence rather than one that shackles them to the localitythey were born and raised and be dependent on state benefits. But what good would that do anyone?
@Daragh McDowell
You’re now entering the realm of the faintly ridiculous
Of course I’m not saying I want to deny people work
Dammit – I’m one of the principle authors of just about the only alternative industrial strategy in this country – the Green New Deal. And I argue un employment is the #1 priority. Do you think I spent timje helping create that strategy if I did not wnt to give people the dignity of work
But Clegg argues for mobility and then denies work – indeed slashes the opportunity to work
That’s the callousness of what he’s doing
I argue for work and offer ways to deliver it
And no – I do not believe in forcing people to move and build new infrastructure. Nor do I want everyone in the south east. Nor do i want ghost towns.
We live in a small densely populated country. The market has failed to deliver work. I argue for investment in delivering work. Work where people are as it’s the cheapest way to deliver it. The best way to deliver it. And markets aren’t delivering any real new work – let alone where people are. So the state has to, must do it
And I’ve begun to show how to fund it
And will do so in more detail soon
I’m not Clegg. I don’t believe in some fairy godmother to deliver work which he wants people to be forced to accept at any price – I want real work for real people, where they are, delivering benefit for the communities where they live and show how this is possible
That’s the difference
That’s why you’re so very wrong
And that’s why I’m delivering new thinking and Clegg is delivering juts what I described
Who in that case is delivering real hope?
I defy you to say Clegg
@Richard
“I do not believe in forcing people to move and build new infrastructure. Nor do I want everyone in the south east. Nor do i want ghost towns.”
This IS one of the big economic conundrums. And the problem is on a global scale. One big success here has been to relocate public services to areas with high unemployment. This, of course, is now about to be horribly reversed.
I don’t want to hark on the LVT theme but other incentives, particularly tax incentives, to relocate jobs to areas where there is a shortage of work, always add distortions and rarely achieve their objectives. LVT, by lowering the tax burden of lower value sites would in theory achieve efficient relocation. Any good infrastructure investment would raise land rental value and become self-funding – a virtuous circle.
The campaign at the moment is looking at an implementation which would leave all but the highest value residential property alone, with the proceeds to be used for raising the income tax threshold. I think you will like it:o)