In the north of England bombing led to significant falls in inequality.
You know, given that inequality is the biggest problem of our times, the crime calling out for revenge etc.
In the north of England bombing led to significant falls in inequality.
You know, given that inequality is the biggest problem of our times, the crime calling out for revenge etc.
“heavier bombing led to a significant increase in the vote share for Labour after the War everywhere, but this effect is transitory in the south while it is permanent in the north.”
It’s weird the authors think that increased Labour vote share equals greater equality.
From the quote above it is obvious that inequality increases due to more Labour voters in the north. Back in the day no levelling up was needed.
“heavier bombing led to a significant increase in the vote share for Labour after the War … it is permanent in the north.”
So, we were bombed by National Socialists so let’s vote Socialist in future. Mugs.
Anyway I think I detect a bit of social science sneakiness here. They start the abstract by referring to “wealth inequality”. Then they drop the qualifier “wealth” and refer merely to inequality. Tut bloody tut.
How did they measure wealth? “… we put together the most comprehensive existing dataset of wealth- at-death for all English people subject to probate”. Therefore (i) it was only wealth at death, and (ii) only for people who had written wills and whose wills went to probate. I wonder how small a proportion of the population that was. I read on: “Somewhere between 30 − 70% of individuals who pass away in a given year are probated.” Hm.
Is anyone here lawyerly? Did lack of probate necessarily imply (as they infer) lack of wealth? What about people with no wills? What about men who simply left everything to their wives. And so on … were there common exceptions to probate for such non-wealth reasons?
P.S. Like all other Americans they could improve the quality of their written English by adopting that excellent device the hyphen.
Well, I for one think we need to take this research seriously, it has after all applied a “simple difference-in-differences framework as well as in a panel-regression discontinuity framework in which we exploit the limited range of German fighter escort planes,” as opposed to the alternative panel-regression discontinuity framework that exploits months of the year beginning with J.
Am I alone in being slightly concerned by any paper that concludes wiping our hard-earned assets off the face of the Earth along with our relatives reduces inequality? Or should I rejoice at SJWs obliterating their own golden calves better than a Luftwaffe bomb ever could?
“… we put together the most comprehensive existing dataset of wealth- at-death for all English people subject to probate”.
“….wealth-at-death….”?
Does that mean they’ve only included the value of someone’s house in the sum total of wealth (the deceased’s estate) at death?
As house prices are generally higher in the South then, notwithstanding any cash, valuables etc held in life then surprise, surprise, most Northerners are going to be “poorer” after dying?
And that must also have been the case after the war.
@ Ironman
I was about to say that destroying wealth in the form of capital assets laboriously built/manufactured and paid-for is certain to reduce inequality. I wonder how they found “no impact”? – possibly they merely found that the measured impact “was not statistically significant” which really means that they failed to find that it was “statistically significant” at the 1% level (less than 1% chance that such an effect could have happened by random chance).
@dearieme
P.S. Like all other Americans they could improve the quality of their written English by adopting that excellent device the hyphen.
We had plenty of hyphens, but have used them all up with hyphenated Americans; African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, LGBQWERTY-Americans. Please help out by donating to our Fund for Hyphen Equity!
@ dearieme
The assumption is that any estate that does not involve probate is “small” below the exemption limit (currently reported to be £5k) – not leaving a will does not exempt the estate from the probate requirement: it just makes everything slower.
It is a common misbelief that probate only applies to wills – it applies to all estates above the “trivial” threshhold, whether or not there is a well.
So probate records cover all significant wealth at death.
Dealt with my father’s death a few years ago. In my jurisdiction (Ontario, Canada) as I understand it, probate is required for an estate with either of a) real estate or b) significant ($50k) value. You can probate a lesser estate but the legal fees are possibly not worth it.
Life insurance payouts with named beneficiaries are not part of the estate. Insurance payouts without beneficiaries are.
There are no “death taxes”, but the value of everything is “crystallized” at death, so the income tax paid before distribution can be significant.
I suspect the money value has not been updated for a while, so it was probably much more significant when the rule was made. I doubt there’s a piece of land sold today in Ontario for less than $50k.
My father had a will so I’m not very familiar with the intestate rules. The lawyer mentioned them. I think for a married person who dies the spouse by default gets everything. For unmarried, it is divided evenly among the closest living relatives by degree (it gets complicated). Having a will changes this, plus the admin fees would be much smaller and it would take much less time.
I’m guessing they used probate since those are public records, so would be easier to get hold of.
I’m also wondering if the value of a house that has been bombed in a town that has been bombed to rubble is reduced below the minimum value that requires probate.
As the Germans decided that starting another world war was less efficient than ruling Europe via the EU and the euro, the labour party decided to import millions of Ropers on the basis that they were well versed in bombing innocent civilians.
@ M
No, because the “National” (Coalition) government had set up a scheme to (probably only partially) compensate property-owners (all, I think, but maybe just homeowners) whose property had suffered bomb damage.
Once you eliminate the noise from confounding variables and adjust for panel-regression discontinuity framework analysis and uncle tom cobblers you’ll hear a whining noise.
Snot fair.
Suck it up, lads. The reason the North is relatively poor is because you had more trades unions and labour politicians than the South.
Many (most?) married couples will own a house as joint owners rather than via tenancy in common; full ownership automatically passes to the survivor on the death of one partner and would not involve probate. How this affects things, I do not profess to know.
This is one of those ‘studies’ and consequential ‘reports’ that can be confidently filed under ‘total bollocks’ without any fear, at all, of being wrong in that opinion. And without wasting any time at all reading any more of it than the ludicrous summary.
Wankers.
@ TomJ
In the unlikely event that someone is a joint tenant of a house but has less than £5,000 in other assets, then his/her estate would be exempt from probate. All the examples of that in the UK are not going to affect the reported %age of wealth belonging to the top 1%, 5%, …50% since they only report that to 2 decimal places of 1%
What was the value of a house in the 1940s? A few hundred pounds in the north of England? I would be surprised if much of that went through probate?
Of course one could die penniless having shifted all your wealth to your heirs before you died. Not sure how many people manage to do it though. IHT isn’t known as the tax on people who hate their family more than the taxman for nothing.
One day a rich man finds a homeless man outside his house and gives him $100. The following day, the rich man’s house is blown up and he joins the homeless guy sleeping on the streets. Quite obviously, inequality has been reduced. And given that creation is much harder than destruction, the way to solve inequality is to destroy all posessions and make everyone destitute.
Are they confusing “levelling up” with “razing to the ground”?
@John77
You can have hundreds of thousand pounds in other assets and still not need probate. The £5000 limit you quote is the threshold at which some financial institutions require probate before releasing the deceased’s funds to the executor. Some institutions have higher limits with some going up to £50K. As the deceased could have money with several it’s possible (but unlikely) to have an estate where probate is not required but inheritance tax is due as it’s over the £325k threshold.
I repeat: “Somewhere between 30 − 70% of individuals who pass away in a given year are probated.” I’m not sure that some of the remarks above are obviously consistent with about half of the dead not being probated. But maybe they are.
Anyway, the paper was too dull to read in detail unless for pay.
P.S. As it happens I can tell you that in late medieval York quite modestly wealthy people wrote wills, later available as historical records. It was easier to read the ones in Latin than the ones in English, my source tells me.
With the recent readiness state of the Luftwaffe, Jerry would be lucky to muster a flyable jet with enough fuel to reach Sheffield. Let alone any ordnance – they’d just have to shout “bang” over the radio at the local ATC.
They’d have to get a friendly Pole in to do the hard work, as normal.
And given that creation is much harder than destruction, the way to solve inequality is to destroy all posessions and make everyone destitute.
Communism in a nutshell.