Wonk Watch

Their latest report.

Many people work longer hours than 30 years ago. Since 1981 two-adult households have added six hours – nearly a whole working day – to their combined weekly workload.

No they haven\’t. This is simply a lie.

Leisure hours have risen: so working hours must have fallen.

And to think, our tax money pays for these cretins to type away.

• Today, nearly 2.5 million people can’t find jobs. Cutting labour to save money without changing working hours means some are burdened with overwork while others lose their livelihoods.
• As a result of this growing inequality in working time, the unpaid components of life are suffering. Family life, neighbourhood networks, time with children and quality of life for older people are all diminished, with painful results for society that sometimes get lumped together and lamented as ‘Broken Britain’.

I\’m sorry? More leisure time leads to a diminution of social life?

Eh?

Doesn\’t this rather obviate their own crazed logic?

Myth 5: Workers in highly paid jobs work harder
It has been claimed that workers at the top end of the income scale work long hours and therefore ‘deserve’ higher earnings. There are several factors, however, that are not usually taken into consideration when calculating hours worked.
One of these factors is the fact that the poorest in our society are just as likely to work long hours in a main job and/or to take on multiple paid jobs. Many need to do so to make ends meet.73 Neither does this myth take account of the number of hours worked outside the market economy. It is often argued that providing care in a family setting should not be included in national accounts because production of services within households is a self-contained activity, with limited repercussions on the rest of the economy. This, as feminists and others have shown, is simply not true. As has been extensively documented elsewhere,74 the non-market economy (or the sphere of reproduction) is necessary for a more complete understanding of the market economy (the sphere of production).Without the reproduction of labour power on a daily and generational basis, productive activities would grind to a halt.
In this sense the inclusion of hours worked in the non-market economy for different income groups is crucial to the understanding of people’s contributions to the economy as a whole – both in the productive and reproductive spheres. Data from ONS’s Time Use Survey 2005 show that people at the bottom of the income scale spend, on average, 82 more minutes per day on ‘providing housework’ than their higher-income counterparts.
If these figures are disaggregated further, considerable differences arise between lower and higher income groups in providing certain types of housework, such as cooking and cleaning. In addition to this, data shows that lower-income groups provide 13 more minutes per day in childcare than higher income people do. Although the difference of care provided for adults is quite small, one could still argue that lower-income groups spend approximately 18 more minutes per day solely on care, which accounts for 8.4 extra hours of work per month. In summary, if we consider the impact of unpaid labour on paid labour, or even the interrelationships between them, we can certainly make the point that lower-income individuals work just as hard (or even harder) than their higher-income counterparts.

Err, the low paid have more leisure time than the highly paid. It\’s one of those things which the Time Use Surveys show. More leisure equals less work when you sum together market and non market production.

Sheesh.

What Marx correctly predicted was that real wages, or returns to workers, would be eroded over time.

Right, they\’re talking complete and total bollocks then. Real wages have not been declining. Marx was not correct. Thus everything else they say on the subject is entirely bollocks then, isn\’t it?

Prevailing wisdom would say yes: pay is a reward that reflects merit.

Sigh.

Pay reflects scarcity. To do job x the skills a,b,c and d are necessary. If we\’ve more people with skills a, b, c and d available than we have jobs x which need them then pay will be low. If we have fewer then pay will be high.

Build social and environmental value into prices. Until goods and services reflect the real costs and benefits of their production, incentives will be misaligned with the kinds of positive behaviours society wishes to promote. Getting the prices right would affect relative profitability and so would align what wages could be paid with the value that is created. Consumption and corporation tax are two vehicles for doing this, but they need to be applied in a progressive way.

Sure, let\’s get all externalities, positive and negative, incorporated into prices then let the market rip.

Although how you have progressive consumption taxes I\’m not really sure….given that the poor will always consume more of their incomes than the rich.

This is indeed true:

Conclusions
This report is not about targeting any individuals in the highly paid jobs it scrutinises. Neither is it simply suggesting that people in low paid jobs should be paid more. The point we are making is a more complex one – that there should be a relationship between what we are paid and the value our work generates for society.

Sure….but the most important point we have to decide first is who gets to decide?

Policy wonks feeding off the government teat? Or individuals voting with their own money as they purchase goods and services?

If high pay is partly intended to compensate for risk, stress and long hours then we would expect dangerous jobs to be well rewarded. Fishing is the most dangerous job in Britain, with roofers and scaffolders also high up on the danger list, and waste recycling collectors are at number 18. Yet in none of these industries are rank-and-file workers highly paid.

Nonsense.

Fishermen, roofers and scaffolders *are* highly paid…..compared to other jobs that require the same levels of human capital. It\’s actually one of the poster children of the study of different wage rates. That those doing dangerous jobs get a wage premium for the danger of their jobs.

Sheesh…..

This is simply glorious:

The impact of globalisation has made matters worse, contributing to an increasing specialisation of the workforce….

Yup, they\’re agin\’ the division and specialisation of labour, the very thing which makes Smithian economic growth happen.

Is there no beginning to their understanding of the subject of economics?

Twats in search of some press copy. How else to explain this?

The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) says Britain, which was the world’s fourth largest economy as recently as 2005, has slipped to seventh this year behind America, China, Japan, Germany, France and Italy.

By 2015, it predicts, Britain will be outside the world’s top 10, behind Russia, Brazil, India and Canada. Slow growth and a weak pound will be responsible for the slide.

Sigh, come along now. We don\’t measure relative sizes of economies using market exchange rates. We do it using PPP exchange rates.

Bit pissed off we hadn\’t been in the papers for a few days were we?

Sunder Katwala of the Fabians:

The Taxpayers\’ Alliance may just be a pressure group, but it aspires to represent all UK taxpayers and speak in their name. It is very keen on accountability, so why won\’t it reveal who its donors are? I am sure there is nothing to hide, so why refuse reveal all donors over the value of, say, £5,000?

So, err, I thought I\’d see how the Fabian Society lists its income.

Here\’s the site.

Clearly my Google JuJu isn\’t all that good for I cannot find anything detailing accounts, donations, annual reports……

Anyone know where they actually are?

I receive a comment from Sam Thompson of the new economics foundation:

Amount of money nef receives from the current government = £0

Really?

Sam, might I suggest that you read your own accounts?

Principal funding sources
Our funding sources are diverse and we receive funding from trusts and foundations, local, regional
and national government and through consultancy contracts.

There is of course wibble room here for the nef.

The aim of nef is to work to establish an economy as if people and the planet mattered.
To advance this aim we work in fotlr Centres:
The Centre for Global Interdependence
. The Centre for W ell-being
. The Centre for the Future Economy
The Centre for Thriving Communities

It\’s the four Centres that get the government dosh, not the nef directly. But since they do mix funds, do transfer and do lift up funds from the Centres to the central body:

e) Restricted funds are to be used for specified purposes as laid down by the donor. Expenditure
which meets these criteria is identified to the fund, together with a fair allocation of overheads
and support costs.

Mhm, hmm…..

Support costs are, umm, £567,000 or so.

So, we\’re told that nef gets no money from the government. nef\’s accounts say they get money from local, regional and national government.

From the apparent structure, the government money goes to the four Centres, each of which are charged support costs, those support costs being what pays for the nef.

This is no government money goes to the nef is it?

Still, I suppose it\’s a paragon of clarity and simplicity compared to the normal reports from that quarter. Remember the Green New Deal which suggested we could increase the capital available for investment in green lovely thingies by lowering interest rates and imposing capital controls in a country that has imported capital for decades? Admittedly, I think that section was written by Caroline Lucas but then who would be stupid enough to let her write anything about economics?

At least we know they\’re being misleading rather than the more normal ignorance of the real world.

She leaves the Fawcett Society (those who continually lie to us about the gender pay gap) to head up a Fake Charity.

So far, so normal for those in \”civil society\” who such at the Government\’s teat.

This is good though.

Yesterday her husband said he hoped he was a hands on father. He refused to comment further on his wife\’s remarks, saying: \”I\’ll have to check with her before saying anything.\”

So, all mobile phones have SMS or texting on them.

Is there any way to turn that feature off?

Specifically, a way to turn it off so that anyone who tries to text you knows that it didn\’t go through? And that it won\’t?

Ben Goldacre sharpens his pencil once again. That Reform report on how we should have more mathematicians.….

….but let\’s round up like the angry maths profs did and say that about 20% of maths graduates enter financial services. Not 40%. I call this "arithmetic".

Not good so far. But then the report makes two economic howlers.

And even more so when the dubious reasoning begins, like with their idea that if there were simply more people around with maths knowledge there would therefore automatically be more (and more lucrative) jobs around requiring that knowledge, into which the new maths graduates would lucratively and instantly fall. I\’m not entirely sure it works like that – I am of course not an economist –

Nor am I an economist but there is a saying around that supply creates its own demand. However, even when people claim it to be true they don\’t mean that supply of a specific good or service creates demand for that specific good or service. Otherwise the Ford Edsel would have sold rather better than it did. So no, having more mathematicians would not create more jobs for mathematicians.

Secondly:

They reason thus: "Each of these students would have earned an additional £3,080 a year due to the market premium on A-level mathematics, equating to £136,000 over their lifetime. The total gain to the economy over the period would have been over £9bn."

Now we\’ll put aside the fact that the BBC said "a maths A-level puts on average an extra £10,000 a year on a salary [not £3,080], says Reform" because I can\’t get £9bn for that period with those numbers (I get £12bn assuming a linear decline, although they may have access to more detailed data), and in any case Reform makes assumptions which are not, at face value, tenable, including the notion that the extra earn would have survived a widening group of people with maths A level.

Quite, if we increase the supply of people with a certain qualification then we\’re going to decrease the earnings premium that said qualification earns (well, unless something truly weird goes on like we need a critical mass of a certain skill before people start to employ it). As indeed has happened with male art degrees….not so long ago (well, OK, eons ago, when I were a lad) an arts degree produced an earnings premium over those without such a degree. Nowadays, with the huge expansion of tertiary education, there is no (on average of course) premium at all for a male holder of an arts degree.

So that £9 billion they claim rather diappears in a puff of economic logic.

Pity, Reform\’s usually rather better than this.