We wouldn't say this is, necessarily, evidence of structural racism

The TUC tells us that the unemployment rate for non-White Britons - or BAME - has risen more than that for White Britons during the events of the past year. We have no doubt that is true. The TUC goes on to insist that this shows the structural racism of the British economy etc. That’s the part we’re not so sure about.

The coronavirus pandemic has held up a “mirror to the structural racism” in the UK’s labour market, the TUC has said, as a study reveals that jobless rates among black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) groups are now double the rate for white people.

The report is here. There’s an unfortunate omission from the calculation. We can’t see the numbers presented simply but it’s possible to back calculate from the ONS - note, the same source as the TUC’s numbers - from here and here. Some substantial portion of those BAME are first generation immigrants.

No, we are not against immigration, nor do we think that racism - structural or not - is just hunky dory. But we are entirely unsurprised that the unemployment rate among first generation immigrants is higher than of the domestically born. Especially in times of stress when it’s those lower down the societal pecking order who are more likely to lose their jobs. After all, it’s not entirely the way we would think things happen that recent immigrants leap to the top of that societal pecking order.

Just as a rough, back of the envelope, something like more than 50% of “Black African” residents in the UK are foreign born as an example.

For us this isn’t in fact about race or immigration. It is, rather, an example of our continued insistence - we have to work out why a thing is occurring before we can craft a response to that occurrence of that thing.

If x is happening because y then that leads to one set of possible solutions, if x is happening because of z then that requires a different response.

If the higher BAME unemployment rate is a result of the recent immigrant status of that healthy portion of the BAME population then responses are - and should be - different from the same problem caused by structural racism.

After all, classes in unconsciously racist bias aren’t going to solve a problem caused by the possibly different linguistic, knowledge capital, educational backgrounds, of immigrants, are they?

Again, to emphasise, the point is not to dismiss the problem, it’s to insist that a solution depends upon why it exists. Something we might therefore spend a little effort upon divining rather than just assuming that the cause is today’s fashionable explanation for everything.

A democracy or a managed society?

Polly Toynbee is most indignant over the attitudes of we British. Apparently we don’t care about the things that she does. Inequality isn’t something most care about all that much. Higher taxation to pay for more government isn’t something most agree with. At which point she says:

This research shows that enthusing the public with a strong enough will to significantly reduce inequality requires exceptionally clever efforts of persuasion.

Well, yeeees.

This brings up the important question. Are we to be a democracy - in which the people get what they vote for, good and hard - or are we to be a managed society? Managed, cajoled, persuaded, forced, into doing what some few think we ought to be doing rather than what we, ourselves, think we should?

We ourselves don’t worry very much about inequality while we do think that poverty itself should be anathematised. This is why we support that free market capitalism - in all it’s neoliberal globalisation - stuff precisely because it significantly reduces poverty while having ambivalent effects upon within nation inequality. We don’t do this because that’s the outcome the British largely seem to want, as Polly complains about, but because we think it’s right.

However, put aside that connection between our desires and those of the people. This really is the big question - whose vision of society should prevail? That of the society or that of those who would manage it?

We go with the idea that governance should be about our concerns, not those people would like to impose upon us. The final structure of the society is then emergent. But then as is obvious we’re not Polly Toynbee nor are we at The Guardian.

GameStop, Reddit and irrational markets

A critique of the use or markets to decide upon things is that markets can, at times, be irrational. So, given irrationality we should use the rational method - all the clever people in government tell everyone else what to do.

Hmm.

GameStop and bear squeezes and Reddit and:

GameStop shares more than doubled in afternoon trading on Wednesday, surprising those who thought the video game retailer’s stock price would stabilise after a fierce rally and steep dive that upended Wall Street in January.

The shares soared nearly 104% during the session in which trading was halted several times, then jumped another 85% after hours.

We agree that we have a certain difficulty in picking the rationality out of that. However, it’s also pretty obvious that whatever is going on there is going to be over in a month or three. Keynes did say that markets can stay irrational longer than you can remain solvent (Redditors adapting that to “We can stay retarded longer…..” which we think is fun even if not wholly rational) but that time horizon is still pretty close.

By contrast, the government is to try to bring in E10 fuel to reduce emissions. By their own calculations this makes us half a billion poorer. Yes, that’s after the benefits of the lower emissions off into the future.

The government was also told, that 17 years ago, in the Stern Review that such planning wasn’t the way to deal with the matter. Instead, a carbon tax and we’re done and dusted on this matter. The Review even pointed out that if we use inefficient methods - planning - rather than efficient - markets suitably adjusted - then because of the increased cost we’ll do less climate mitigation because of those higher costs.

Markets can indeed be less than rational but for decades long pighead irrationality there’s nothing to beat government. The argument in favour of markets being that sure, to err is human, but what’s the best correction method we’ve got?

It's the right method even if the specific experiment may or may not work

Certain facts about the retail estate:

Online sales soared more than a third last year, according to data experts IMRG - the highest growth in 13 years and in stark contrast to overall retail sales that fell into negative territory.

Meanwhile, oversupply in the casual dining market means the biggest restaurant chains are shutting sites rather than opening new ones.

This has forced property owners to find new ways of tempting customers back to shopping centres and high streets when the economy reopens.

The pandemic associated lockdowns have accelerated that change from bricks and mortar retailing to online. We thus need - require - less of that built environment to be devoted to the delivery of retail services.

OK, economies have gone through such changes before, no doubt will again. Somewhere between 1890 and 1920 vast numbers of urban stables had to be repurposed and they didn’t all become mews cottages. Hay and oats supplies were replaced by those of petrol.

The question is not whether the change, but how to achieve it?

Last spring Harvey Jenkinson decided to take a gamble. The chief executive of Gravity, an indoor trampoline park operator, signed a deal to take on an 80,000 sq ft space in a shopping centre in southwest London, previously rented by the now-bust department store Debenhams.

“We signed the lease at the height of the pandemic, which many people might have thought was a bit crazy,” he says. “It’s not been easy for us. We’ve had to apply for government support to survive, but we had to push forward and see beyond this.”

The company is now preparing to open the four-floor venue in Wandsworth’s Southside shopping centre this summer, filling the space with a Japanese-style go-karting area, 16 full-length bowling lanes, pool tables, ping pong and crazy golf.

We haven’t the slightest as to whether that’s a good idea or not. Our point though is that nor does anyone else. No one in central government, no combination of local authorities, us all out here as consumers, even the people building and paying for the conversion. We can all have opinions, sure, but none of us actually knows.

Because no one does know what to do with the urban estate. We face uncertainty here, not probability. Within the universe of things it is possible to do what is it that people want done? Our only method of finding out is to do many different things and see what sticks.

That is, we have to use market methods - which is what just allowing people to get on with experimenting is - rather than planning. The reason we can’t plan being that we’ve no damn idea what will work.

Full on laissez faire - allowing the employment of the Fleet River as the drainage for an open air slaughterhouse again - isn’t required. But the freedom to just get on with changes of use is.

How else are we going to work out what to do with cities if we don’t experiment?

Republicans and Redistricting

2021 will define politics in the US for the next ten years. With the 2020 census complete, state legislatures have now begun the redistricting process.

For those of you that don’t know, every ten years the American political system undergoes a major shakeup, known as redistricting, in which congressional district lines are redrawn to accommodate for population changes amongst the states. Article 1, Section 2 of the US Constitution requires that Representatives are reapportioned amongst the states after the decennial census, to ensure that that no state is over or under represented (relative to their population) in the House.

However, since state legislatures have primary control over the ‘times, places and manner’ of congressional elections, the act of dividing their state into districts, from which their representatives are elected, is entirely up to them. While some states have, in the interest of fairness, opted to have their district boundaries drawn by independent or bipartisan commissions, a great deal are still drawn by whoever happens to control the state legislature at the time.

The parties that are in control are able to advantage themselves by drawing district lines in their favour. This practice is known as gerrymandering and is done by a method known as ‘packing and cracking’ in which the redistricting party will attempt to group all opposition party voters into a single district with an incredibly high victory margin (packing) and spread their own voters out amongst numerous districts with low victory margins (cracking), meaning that while the opposition wastes a great deal of votes in the safe district, their votes will tip the scales in marginal districts.

But what about this decade’s round of redistricting?

Now that the 2020 census is complete, state legislatures have begun their redistricting efforts - meaning that the parties who have gained or maintained power at the state level are in a position to make the rules for the next decade’s elections.

Interestingly enough, while Republicans performed comparatively poorly on the national level, it was the opposite story at the state level - holding every previous majority as well as flipping the State Senate and House in New Hampshire. In fact, it is estimated that Republicans will have control over 188 district boundaries compared to 73 for the Democrats (Wasserman, 2021) - the rest being controlled by independent or bipartisan commissions. On top of this, Republicans control the legislatures in some of the 2020 Election’s most contentious states, such as Texas and Florida which are also the states that look likely to gain representatives due to an increase in population. With this significant advantage, Republicans need only find a way to gain seven more seats to secure a majority in the next election. This news should provide new hope for any supporters of the GOP that might have given up.

However, while on the surface this seems promising to Republicans, it is less encouraging when we consider that in the 2011 round of redistricting they were in control of a far greater proportion of district lines. This is important for two reasons. Firstly, it means that a great deal of Congressional Districts already benefited the GOP and so redrawing these to create an even larger advantage, even when we consider the heightened accuracy that their boundaries will get from the more recent information available, will be very difficult. And secondly, if the Democrats have been able to win a majority in the House despite the last round of redistricting heavily favouring Republicans, the fact that the 2021 round of redistricting provides a smaller additional advantage than the one that Democrats were already able to overcome may mean little for the Democrats’ prospects at the midterm elections.

All things considered, it looks like the GOP are in for a rough one!

Reasons for optimism - health

Even if the anticipated advances are made in medicine, some question whether the outlook for people’s health should be on balance optimistic. Despite major medical advances in recent years, analysts point to obesity, smoking, unhealthy diets and lack of exercise as factors that have, for many, contributed to poorer health than progress in medicine might have suggested would come about.

These factors are for most people lifestyle choices, and are susceptible to change if people decide to change their behaviour, or if technological developments make that behaviour less harmful to their health. Already there are grounds for optimism on smoking, in that it is the smoke, rather than the nicotine, that causes the associated illnesses. Tobacco smoking is diminishing in developed countries as less harmful ways of using nicotine have appeared. Patches and pills have helped people to quit, but vaping has been the most successful. There is every reason to suppose that smoking will virtually disappear, first in the developed world, and then in the less developed parts.

Information campaigns have helped more people appreciate which foods are unhealthy if overindulged in, and this will undoubtedly continue. For people who lack the resolution to eat healthily, it is likely that less harmful versions of the favourite foods will be developed to enable people to enjoy them without picking up the tab of obesity.

Scientists in several pharmaceutical labs are working to develop drugs that can help combat obesity, either by suppressing the appetite cravings, or by helping the body to process high-calorie foods without taking in as many of the calories they contain. Given the demand for such drugs, and the resources available for research into them, there are grounds for optimism about the outcome.

Lack of exercise is more problematic, given the emergence of driverless cars, electric scooters and later on passenger-carrying drones. It will take more conscious effort to fit in more exercise than daily activities will require. But here, too, the combination of information campaigns and new drugs will alleviate the problem. People will probably soon have access to drugs that can enhance the metabolic gains yielded by exercise, making a little of it go a longer way physiologically.

The same combination to reduce the effects of harmful lifestyle choices holds promise for most of them, including excess drinking of alcohol. It is the wider spread of information about their effects and the alternatives that are available, combined with new drug therapies that mitigate their effects.

If we were to rely on such things as sugar taxes, minimum alcohol pricing and advertising bans, there would be little ground for optimism because they have marginal, if any, effect. But the combination of wider information with mitigating products is more successful, and gives grounds for optimism that people might be more healthy in future than they are now.

A certain amusement about living wage calculations

The Guardian tells us that the “living wage” for West Virginia is $20 an hour or so. This is ludicrous:

Despite Manchin’s insistence on an $11 minimum wage, according to MIT’s living wage calculator, even a $15 minimum wage would only provide a living wage for single West Virginians without children. For a West Virginia family with two working parents and two children, both parents would need to be making at least $20.14 an hour to make ends meet.

That’s $83,782.40 per year for that household of four people, 2 adults and 2 children. The calculation runs:

The living wage model is an alternative measure of basic needs. It is a market-based approach that draws upon geographically specific expenditure data related to a family's likely minimum food, childcare, health insurance, housing, transportation, and other necessities (e.g., clothing, personal care items, etc.) costs. The living wage draws on these cost elements and the rough effects of income and payroll taxes to determine the minimum employment earnings necessary to meet a family's basic needs while also maintaining self-sufficiency.

The living wage model exceeds the poverty level as measured by the poverty thresholds, but it is a modest 'step up,' which accounts for individual and family needs. The living wage model does not include funds for what the public considers the necessities enjoyed by many Americans. It does not incorporate funds for pre-prepared meals or those eaten in restaurants. It does not contain money for leisure time or unpaid vacations or holidays.

Lastly, it does not provide a financial means for planning for the future through savings and investment or for the purchase of capital assets (e.g., provisions for retirement or home purchases). The living wage is the minimum income standard that, if met, draws a fine line between the financial independence of the working poor and the need to seek out public assistance or suffer consistent and severe housing and food insecurity. In light of this fact, the living wage is perhaps better defined as a minimum wage covering necessary costs for persons living in the United States.

The median household income for the US is $68,703 per year. West Virginia is by no means the most expensive state - given property prices it’s pretty cheap in comparison with many others.

That is, this calculation of “a minimum wage covering necessary costs for persons living in the United States” is insane. Good grief, that’s within the top 5% of all global incomes. The idea that 5% of the global population - the US population is about that - should all be in the top 5% of the global income distribution is taking American exceptionalism a step or three too far.

Even the people proposing this as the “minimum income” don’t believe it. For if they did they’d be demanding the stripping away of every rule, regulation and tax that weighs even slightly upon economic growth. For that would be the only way of achieving the desired goal. And, obviously, our friends on the left do not advocate such policies - or lack of them.

The idea of a living wage, as with Adam Smith and the linen shirt, is fine but every calculation of the desired world does require that occasional look out the window at reality. Calling $80k a year the minimum necessary income takes us well beyond Lake Wobegon territory.

It’s even possible to do a small error check. That $83,000 is about £59,000. What portion of The Guardian’s staff is paid that much even in London, a much more expensive place to live? Is The Guardian castigating itself for paying poverty wages? Well then….

Happy birthday Carl Menger!

Carl Menger, the founding thinker of the Austrian School of Economics and pioneer of the concept of marginal utility, was born on this day, 23 February, in 1840. His revolutionary, individual-focused approach to economics influenced many others, including his compatriots Friedrich von Wieser, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek; and his influence still resonates widely today.

Menger studied in Prague and Vienna before becoming a business journalist. In that role, he realized that the teaching of mainstream, ‘classical’ economics did not match the real-life workings of markets. So, in 1867 he began writing a new approach, Principles of Political Economy (1871). By the age of just 33, he had become Chair in Economic Theory at the prestigious University of Vienna.

Menger thought that the classical economists were wrong to focus on whole collections of things, such as the total production of goods, or the total demand for them. This caused them to search vainly for quasi-mechanical statistical linkages (such as ‘equilibrium’) between these totals. He called this methodological collectivism. But statistics, he knew, were mere summaries of events and do not affect each other. Only individual events have consequences. What actually drives economic life, he realised, is how individual people value individual goods, and how they each act upon those values. Economics must therefore start, not from statistics, but from the values and actions of individuals—an approach he called methodological individualism.

A key part of this new method was subjectivism. Many economists thought that the value of a good was objectively measurable — its value was the amount of labour used to produce it. Menger countered that goods have no inherent value in themselves. Value was in the eye of the beholder: individuals formed their own (and differing) valuations of different goods at different times, depending on their specific needs and preferences. We now call this the subjective theory of value.

These approaches enabled Menger to develop the idea of Marginal Utility (now a central tenet of mainstream economics), solving the classical paradox of why water, a vital commodity, is valued less than diamonds, a largely useless one. He showed that value depends not just on the qualities of the good itself, but on the quantity that is available to us. Water may be vital, but there is generally a lot of it around; only when it is in very short supply (in a desert, for example) do we place great value on it.

Menger’s individualism and subjectivism led him (and Austrian School followers such as Mises and Hayek) to reject interventionism. Economics was an ongoing process of continual adjustment to events, not a machine to be tinkered with. Capitalism, he observed, systematically encourages people to serve others as the means to better their own condition. Government intervention disrupts that collaboration, distorting prices and creating gaps between resources and their most valued applications. Those mismatches then prompt calls for yet more intervention — increasing the economic damage even more.

Eamonn Butler is author of Austrian Economics: A Primer

Driving the road out of lockdown by data, not dates

Victoria Street 

SW1 

“Humphrey.” 

“Yes, Minister?” 

“Why have you dragged me into the office on a Saturday?” 

“The Cabinet Secretary was on last evening.  The PM wants a draft of Monday’s statement to the House to discuss with senior Cabinet ministers by tomorrow morning.” 

“I thought Dom Cummings did that sort of thing.” 

“He left us some time ago, Minister. My understanding is that the PM’s Jack Russell was considered to have rubbed along with him with excessive enthusiasm.” 

“I wondered why I hadn’t seen Dom recently.  Sic transit and all that.” 

“The Sage scientists joined us overnight and we now have a 60 page draft setting out the four steps out of lockdown. Our brief is to be statesmanlike, with no Latin tags or jokes.” 

“I had rather hoped you’d given up jokes for Lent, Humphrey. Caution must be our watchword.” 

“We decided that being ‘led by the science’ is so last year that the PM will now be ‘driven by data, not dates’.  The date for making each step will be determined by four tests: ‘The first is that the vaccine programme runs to schedule. Second, the evidence must show that vaccines are reducing hospital admissions and deaths. Ministers will also be looking at infection rates. Finally, if any new variants emerge that are potentially vaccine-resistant then the easements could be halted.’” 

“Humphrey, I’m no scientist but that looks like only one test to me.  We’ve already told the public that we have so much vaccine supply that we are bringing vaccination dates forward and we know they work.  There’s no chance Sage could know the vaccine resistance of new variants in a couple of weeks or so.  And it’s never black or white.  New variants seem to be partially clobbered by existing vaccines, if not wholly.  So it’s just infection rates.  What are the R numbers, since we are driven by data, which should tell us to speed up, or slow down, the four steps?” 

“My understanding is that the R rate is now also considered rather ‘last year’. Sage knows that infection rates are the only things we can monitor speedily but they are a better indicator anyway than hospital admissions or, sadly, deaths. Sage also knows that they will rise immediately after each step but it would be foolish to set arbitrary benchmarks to measure them against.  So if they are going uppish a bit too much, we will delay the next step, and if they are dropping, we will ignore them.” 

“It is always a joy to behold science in action, Humphrey.” 

“Indeed, Minister. The four steps start with schools and further education colleges all back on March 8th but not universities which were hotbeds of infection last autumn.  Students away from home indulge in all kinds of misbehaviour. ‘Socialising outdoors will be allowed with one person from another household’ so long as they do not play tennis or golf.” 

“Why is that?” 

“Apparently sitting together on a park bench is perfectly safe but walking round a golf course is potentially lethal. Visitors to care homes will be allowed and 30 people at a funeral.” 

“Well that’s good.  My wife incinerates the Sunday roast so we can have all our friends, sorry mourners, round. What’s next?” 

“On March 29th outdoor sports will be perfectly safe again.” 

“What data will drive that?” 

“It will be too soon after March 8th to have any actual data but we will review before the next step on April 12th when ‘the number of people allowed at weddings and funeral wakes will increase to 15.’” 

“30 mourners were allowed five weeks earlier.” 

“Well spotted Minister.  Half the 30 mourners cannot attend the wake. The important thing is that shops, hairdressers, holiday rentals and pretty much anything outdoors can start again the week after Easter. We must avoid the damage done at Christmas.” 

“Good heavens, yes.” 

“The next two steps, on May 17th and June 21st, then liberate pretty much everything except masks and social distancing.” 

“Humphrey, that’s five steps, not four.” 

“Yes, I know but it is less confusing for the public if everything is presented as four items.  The five week intervals between steps are really only four because each then needs a week’s notice.” 

“But you are giving them notice now!  And I suppose the only so-called data test has to be announced as four for the same reason?” 

“Indeed, Minister, we must not confuse the public.” 

“Well I think confusing the public is exactly what we are doing.  The hospitality industry cannot conduct all its business outdoors and is being hung out to dry until midsummer’s day allegedly on the grounds of data. But you and I know, Humphrey, that the evidence of last summer gave no indication at all that the hospitality sector was a problem.  Cases dropped then and only rose when schools went back.” 

“Data, Minister, are in the eyes of the beholder.” 

“Does that wrap everything up, Humphrey?” 

“I fear not.  There are a number of things that have proved too difficult to resolve so we are setting up reviews to report back in April.” 

“Four, by any chance?” 

“Indeed, Minister: how long we will need social distancing and face masks, international travel, Covid status certification and safe return of major events.

“Well, there’s no doubt that Covid certification, or passports, will be needed for international travel or that the airline and holiday industries need to know now what will happen this summer so why do we need to faff about on these things for two months?” 

“Well certification is very complex.  We have to agree on the format and ensure they cannot be forged.  Yes, I know we’ve had international health certificates for decades but this is a new age and we have more civil servants to employ. And their domestic use is especially tricky.  Some people having certification and others not that implies exclusion and discrimination – especially if we start denying people employment just because they have refused to be vaccinated.” 

“Humphrey, really, what rot is this? Are you seriously telling me that it is my human right to go round infecting people?” 

“I regret that Sir William Macpherson changed the law in 1998 so it is now a question of what the ‘victim’ perceives. As a white, male, Oxbridge heterosexual (four strikes) person, your perception does not count.  The perception of someone who has denied herself the vaccine, does.”  

“Well I expect common sense will dawn one day.  In the meantime we have this great plan which most people will think jolly sensible.  It has lots of dates and absolutely no data by which progress can be judged.  You cannot expect more common sense than that.” 

“No, indeed not, Minister.” 

John Harris and the transformation of the welfare state

John Harris has one of those we must build back better pieces. We need a new Beveridge plan and all that. We’re fine with that idea of discussing the base structures of the welfare state. We just think there are a few base points that have to be understood about it:

Despite the self-evident caveat that wars and pandemics are very different things, the parallels between the uneasy historical moment that story captures and the current phase of the Covid crisis are obvious. The past 12 months have seen a mixture of unprecedented deaths and huge collective sacrifice. Moreover, as the crisis has gone on, profound social questions that have been rattling around British politics for at least a decade – about poverty, inequality, work, and housing – have roared into the foreground. If some people are asking questions about a return to “normal” and the dashed hopes that would represent, that hardly seems unreasonable.

The first hard fact that we’d call into evidence is one that Polly Toynbee has been complaining about for decades now. Britons wouldn’t mind that Scandinavian all embracing welfare state but we’ve a marked resistance to paying for it. That is, no one really has managed to sustainably increase taxation to more than 36, perhaps 37% of GDP. That seems to be a hard limit to what will be paid for whatever system is put in place. To shout that other places do manage it is just to note that other places are populated by different people.

A second is that those Scandis also have a markedly more free market economy than we do. That’s the balancing item that makes their welfare heavy systems work.

The importance of the funding limitation of that tax share of GDP is that it forces a decision upon a welfare system. It is possible to have a generous but selective system. It’s possibly to have a universal and not generous system. But there’s not enough of everything there to have a generous and also universal system.

We can, for example, fund university for some portion of the age cohort through taxation but not the 50% currently going. We can fund child care for those who really need it but full time for everyone? Not enough cash.

We also need to decide what it is that is to be dealt with:

“want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness”

OK, those can be dealt with as we have dealt with them. As Barbara Castle pointed out back in 1959, that sort of destitution didn’t exist even then.

a welfare state that too often both sustains and deepens scarring inequality

Ah, no, inequality is something different. As is that modern measure of poverty, being on less than 60% of median income. From Harris again:

A first step towards a basic income might guarantee that, say, a family of four could count on a minimum of £10,000 a year.

We tend to like the idea of a universal basic income around here. But we keep insisting that the important word there is basic. That family of four on £10,000 would still, by current definitions, be poor. Median household income is £30,000 a year or so. This calculator tells us that £10,000 leaves the family at perhaps the second percentile. That is, 98% of the country gains a higher per capita income and so this is definitively poverty when we define that as less than 60% of median income.

Which is what we mean about having to decide. Do we want to make sure everyone, as of right, no questions, has some base amount? Or, do we want to beat inequality? Because we can’t do both, not within that limit of how much tax Britons seem to be willing to pay.

We can only have a generous but selective system or a universal and meagre one. A point which we all do have to understand if we are to have this discussion about the transformation of the welfare state. We’ve a budget constraint and no, we can’t have it all.

An insistence that we can have, just as an example, a basic income which is also 60% of median is to make the “and a pony” mistake.