A Capitalist Carol, Stave 1

Capitalism was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. Its utter demise was reported by the BBC coverage of the financial crash, registered by the Occupy Movement, and solemnised on the steps of Downing Street by Ed Splurge himself, a copy of the General Theory and a thirty-seven-point public spending plan in his hand. Capitalism was as dead as a doornail. How could it be otherwise? Splurge knew capitalism well; they had been adversaries as long as anyone could remember. Splurge’s party had been harping on about the instability of capitalism for seventy years, though nobody else seemed aware of it – certainly not capitalism, which annoyingly went on and on, producing economic growth and prosperity. Even China and India got in on the act, lifting billions out of poverty by entering the global trading network. But Splurge knew that one day, capitalism’s inherent contradictions would strangle it; and at last, inexplicably to his Keynesian advisers but joyously for all that, the day had come.

Oh! But he was a generous hand at the subsidies, Splurge! Soft and proliferous as rabbits, open to any entreaty, always ready to dispense a trifle here, a trifle there, from the public finances. Splurge found it blissfully easy to be generous with other people’s money. And today, the usual band of supplicants – farmers of crops and wind, builders of pointless railways, teachers and doctors – was swelled by new crowds: of bankers, mortgage lenders and insurers, all pleading to him for bail-outs. Before the day was out, he would have nationalized all the latter, with a smile.

“We will need many more public servants,” Splurge told his Downing Street staff, to warm applause. But his press officer, in letting himself out to spread this news, had let two other people in. They were a thin couple, with briefcases and small reading-glasses, who announced that they represented the Office for Budget Responsibility.

“At this stage in the economic cycle,” said one, picking up a pen, it is more than usually desirable that governments should make some provision to balance their books. Many thousands are living on public subsidies. Hundreds of thousands are struggling to pay their taxes. What spending cuts shall I put you down for?”

“Nothing!” Splurge replied. “Are there no presses at the Royal Mint?” he asked. “Are there no work-creation schemes?"

“Plenty of presses,” said one of the representatives, “and running hot as always.” “And countless work-creation schemes,” said the other, “each struggling to create any work at all.”

“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop expansionary policy in its useful course,” said Splurge. “I’m very glad to hear it is still going.”

Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the OBR representatives withdrew. Splurge resumed his labours, signing cheques and issuing public procurement orders with an improved energy. He must have been doing it for hours.

And then, “God save you, uncle!” cried a familiar voice. It was Splurge’s nephew, fresh from his class on Austrian Economics. “Recession to you is but a time for paying bills without money, or at least for borrowing it from the next generation. My classmates and I do not know how we will get by, with all the money that your generation has stolen from us!”

“Bah! Humbug!” said Splurge. “Good afternoon, nephew!"

“I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. Like everyone else in the country, I try to keep my books balanced. What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great nation!”

“Good afternoon!”

His nephew left the room, without an angry word, but with a look of disappointment about him. The clerk in the outer office involuntarily applauded Splurge’s resolution.

“And you, and your fellow public servants, I suppose, in these difficult times you will be wanting me to raise your pay? Increase your index-linked pensions? Bring in paternity leave? Extend your paid holidays? Recruit more assistants? And cut interest rates?”

“Oh, yes sir!” said the clerk.

“Very well then,” replied Splurge. “We do need to spend to revive the economic system. Have the papers drawn up for my signature tomorrow!”

And with that, spent out by the day’s events, he made his way tired but happy up to his private apartment on the top floor of Downing Street, where a generous supper awaited him.

Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about this, in that he dined free at the public expense every day.

So let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Splurge, having this free feast before him, felt a strange need to check his own wallet, and saw on one of the banknotes an eery image of someone he thought he had put out of his mind for good…

Right question, wrong solution here

Given that it is Christmas Day an opportunity for us to play The Grinch. There's a certain amount of truth in the analysis here, although not a great deal. It's just the solution proposed that is wrong:

Some people in private rental accommodation are having to cut back on food and heating to cope with rising rents, according to research by the National Housing Federation (NHF).

The organisation, which represents housing associations across England, said soaring rents and high deposits were making life increasingly difficult for those locked out of homeownership.

In a survey of 1,183 private tenants it found that 41% of those with children had struggled to pay their rent at least once. Across all tenant households, 31% had been in difficulties.

More than a quarter of the families surveyed said they had cut back on buying food to meet their housing costs, and just under a quarter had cut back on heating.

Well, yes, we're sure this happens. As it also happens that some in social housing cut back on heating and or food to afford their rents, as those in owner occupied housing cut back on both or either at times in order to pay mortgages or maintenance bills. This is simply a fact of life for anyone at all facing income constraints. As all of us do of course. Our desires are unlimited and our incomes, as with the more general point about economic resources, are limited.

It is, of course, possible to insist that the general cost of housing (of any and all types) is "too high" and thus propose solutions to this perceived problem.

The group called on the government to provide more affordable homes for families on low and middle incomes. Its chief executive, David Orr, said: “We have too many renters just keeping their heads above water, who are being kept awake at night and suffering from stress over the worry of paying the next rent bill.

“The government needs to come up with a bolder, long-term plan for housebuilding so that families across the country can find the homes they need, at a price they can afford.”

And a bold new plan would also be a nice idea. But that call on the government "to provide" is the wrong way to go about this. For it is the government, as we've said innumerable times before, with the Town and Country Planning Acts, that is the problem. Those acts artificially restrict the pieces of land upon which housing may be built. Thus housing, as a result of those restrictions, is more expensive than it would be without the restrictions. This is true of any form or sort of housing: owner occupied, rental, social, "affordable" or otherwise.

And the solution is obvious: loosen those restrictions on what may be built where.

As, of course, happened in the 1930s when the scale of housebuilding was what actually dragged the country up out of recession.

That would be a nice seasonal present, would it not? The government solving the housing problem by the government stopping doing what the government has done to create the housing problem?

The divorce of theology from modern social science and public policy

In modern discourse, talk of God, divinity, spirituality and so on is forcibly divorced from the sciences (considered in the broadest sense). Contemporary mainstream moral philosophy, political economy, political science, economics (not to mention the natural sciences) rarely, if at all, discuss the consequences of the nature of God for the questions they all address. Consider this: God, by definition, is omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. Now, without introducing any metaphysical complications, we can say that either God exists or God doesn’t exist (my opinion is that the former is true). If God doesn’t exist, then we can continue working within and articulating the scientific paradigms that currently permeate throughout society. However, as soon as we presume God’s existence, theology becomes fundamental for understanding any other form of knowledge whatsoever. It becomes a primary concern of metaphysics, epistemology and logic. This then feeds through to the sciences that we practice, albeit imperfectly, in modern society. Depending on the presumed conception of God, methodologies and their employment as well as theories and their applications will differ accordingly.

In Plato’s Republic, Socrates considers the nature of the Gods whilst describing his grand, centrally planned society. In India, the caste system is said to have had divine origins (though its interpretation and enforcement became increasingly skewed with time) and this has exerted a profound impact on the socioeconomic organisation of the subcontinent that continues to this day. One of the most famous miracles of Jesus Christ was feeding the multitude with one loaf of bread – to put it simply, divinity can deal with the fundamental economic problem of scarcity for the welfare of all.

Benedict de Spinoza, like many other philosophers and theologians of his age and the preceding ones, offers his readers an account that includes both a proof and a description of the nature of God; to put one of the main conclusions in Spinoza’s Ethics crudely; everything that comes naturally and feels right is good because it has its origins in God and God is good. Now, that which comes naturally is done freely and, intuitively, freedom feels right.

So all this talk of free markets and a free society has a natural resonance with humanity. There is something undoubtedly divine about free will, freedom and a free society.

Why is Polly whining about Downton Abbey?

La Toynbee is whining about Downton Abbey. How it shows the appallingness of old English society and how we're coming back to that masters and servants type world again. Hmm:

To control history by rewriting the past subtly influences present attitudes too: every dictator knows that.

Well, yes, quite.

What we never see is bedraggled drudges rising in freezing shared attics at 5.30am; slopping out chamber pots, heaving coal, black-leading grates, hauling cans of hot water with hands already made raw by chilblains and caustic soda. We never dwell on the hardship of scrubbing floors, or scrubbing clothes, or scouring grease; in pre-detergent days, they were up to their elbows all day long. And yet they had virtually no water or time for washing themselves. Servants were often sooty and dirty. They smelled strongly of sweat, with few clean clothes, says Dr Lucy Delap, author of Knowing Their Place: Domestic Service in Twentieth-Century Britain. She says they used patchouli oil to cover the sweat, the identifying aromas of hard service. In Mrs Woolf and the Servants, Alison Light records Virginia Woolf observing “Mabel sweats when she is making jam”. Even the somewhat more enlightened and sometimes embarrassed Bloomsbury set wrote of their “inferiors”, Woolf talking of “that poor gaping imbecile, my charwoman”.

True.

Modern capitalism promotes the myth that we are all masters of our fate and birth is not destiny, as proof that swelling wealth at the top has been earned.

And that's where it jars. For it is modern capitalism that has stopped people having to carry water in chilblained hands. Stopped the scrubbing over the boiling laundry, the wrestles with the mangle. This is what both Hans Roslin and Ha Joon Chang, quite correctly, refer to as the technology of the washing machine. It's possibly the outstanding achievement of modern capitalism that it has managed to mechanise all of these domestic chores, freeing up large portions of the human race to do something more interesting and less exhausting.

The bits that are left out of Downton Abbey are exactly the bits that justify capitalism itself: the reduction in human drudgery. And no, socialism didn't do this: your humble author has been the less than proud owner of a Soviet washing machine and it did not remove said drudgery. This is exactly what is meant by the complaints that the Soviets concentrated upon heavy industry rather than consumer products.

There is, of course, something else that Polly's left out. Historically, in Britain at least, being a servant was more akin to an apprenticeship than anything else. Something done between puberty and marriage for the vast majority of those who did it. Only those who went on to become the senior servants (housekeeper, butler and so on) were likely to make a "career" of it. Being in service was, for most, a phase, not a life sentence.

No, we most certainly don't want to bring back mass service. Quite apart from the fact that the capitalist technology makes it irrelevant as an institution. But perhaps we could do without those who try "To control history by rewriting the past"?

How about an online platform through which citizens can repeal laws?

A platform through which citizens could directly vote to abolish laws would enable the electorate to directly limit the size of government. Enabling institutionalised, immediate public backlashes to legislation and responses to previous legislation would help modernise governance by creating a new, peaceful and legitimate check-and-balance on power that enhances the democratic process. One of the arguments for having elected representatives (as opposed to Direct Democracy) is that the deliberative, legislative is inherently complicated and it would be impractical for everyone were directly involved. Representatives, supposedly, effectively synthesise and present the interests of a heterogeneous constituency. Of course, it would be difficult with the current state of technology for all eligible, voting citizens to propose amendments, directly deliberate etc. in the policymaking process. However, it would only, in theory, require a majority of eligible voters to simply repeal laws (voting in favour of repeal and abolition does not, after all, require careful rewording etc.).

Some might argue that this would make government’s job very difficult since there could easily be a popular, legal revolt against newly enacted, controversial pieces of legislation. They argue that unpopular legislation is necessary “for the sake of the public good” but who are they to impose on others their vision of an ideal society? If people cannot be persuaded about the merits of their proposals, what right do they have to impose them? Providing a legal means of revolt will create an alternative, much-needed, non-violent channel through which legislators will also be able to gauge exactly how people feel about some laws.

There may, in the end, be very few laws that a clear majority of eligible voters would even agree to abolish. However, even if there are currently only a handful of laws that we would collectively repeal from the vast, voluminous collection we are subject to, it reduces the need to lobby and burden our representatives with something we ourselves, as the people, could do. This will also enable increased deliberation by representatives on more salient issues.

Wouldn’t it be an absolute pleasure if we could, en masse, stop proposed tax increases and limit the continuous extortion of individuals by government? That’s just one example though. Think of all the other absurd laws that we would collectively have the power to stop without having to lobby our representatives. Most importantly, we can see first-hand whether we would collectively choose to continue restricting ourselves or to actually abolish those laws that inhibit the free society.

The UK just isn't as unequal as people seem to think

We've often said around here that the national inequality figures overstate the actual amount of inequality that there is in the UK. Yes, there's very definitely regional inequality in incomes. But there's also significant regional inequality in the cost of living. Not all that surprisingly (with the exception of parts of the SW) the higher living costs (most especially housing) are also where the higher incomes are. The UK is very much more unequal in such regional terms than most other countries simply as a consequence of London's domination of the economy. What that in turn means is that consumption inequality, the only form of inequality that we could possibly really worry about, is a lot smaller than the income inequality that we all normally measure.

And from the Taxpayers' Alliance recent report, this little snippet:

The analysis showed a geographical divide in taxpayers and benefits recipients. Households in the East Midlands and London, as well as the south east, east and south west of England paid more in taxes than they received in benefits. All the other regions received more in benefits than they paid in taxes.

Households in the North East of England received an average of £3,175 more in benefits and benefits in kind than they paid in taxes, whereas in London households paid £4,119 more in taxes than they received.

The tax and benefit system also reduces that regional inequality even further.

We're really not as unequal as everyone likes to say that we are.

Abolishing marriage law with a smooth transition

There are several reasons for abolishing marriage law and preventing the government from regulating caring or amorous relationships (of which there are many, besides marriage) but to do this such that the transition is smooth for those affected by it is an important consideration. Many feminists, for example, emphasise marriage’s historical role in discriminating against women, other cultures, religions, ethnic minorities, homosexuals, non-dyadic relationships etc. and that, for this reason, the entire institution should be abolished. My presumption here is not that the institution itself needs to be abolished but that the laws surrounding it do. Brake (2012) wrote that marriage law is usually (though not always) sufficient for ‘amatonormativity’ – the “disproportionate focus on marital and amorous love relationships as special sites of value, and the assumption that romantic love is a universal goal” which also discriminates against other forms of caring relationships such as friendships, urban tribes, adult care networks, quirkyalones etc. She proposes ‘minimizing marriage’ in such a way that caring relationships are still rewarded by the government but that people have to ‘opt in’ to marriage’s legal rights instead of obtaining them by default. Chambers (2013), on the other hand, suggests having ‘piecemeal’ regulation where people can ‘opt out’ of certain rights they obtained (by default) through marriage.

Brake rightly flags up “transitional problems”; transition management will determine public receptivity with respect to announced liberalisations. In dealing with these problems, amalgamating both Chambers and Brake’s ideas may be fruitful. Suppose a legislative body passes a law on date X stating that all existing regulation with respect to marriage (now defined purely by individual preferences and private contracts between consenting individuals, if at all) will be annulled for those who get married at or after a certain future date, Y (the difference (Y–X) being the ‘grace period’).

So if the law is passed in 2015, and 2020 is the specified year that people who are married in or after are not subject to any government regulation whatsoever, then there is a ‘grace period’ of 5 years. For those people who married during or before 2015, we could apply Chambers’ proposal of letting them keep their default rights (so as not to impose change which they might not want) but giving them the option of ‘opting out’ of certain rights. For those who get married during the ‘grace period’, Brake’s ‘opting in’ option can be applied so engaged individuals’ lives don’t become complicated and their plans aren’t frustrated by policy changes. In this way, it would be a gradual, eased-in movement toward a purer, unadulterated freedom with respect to personal relationships.

Osborne's cuts take us back to the dark days of, umm, 2001

It's good to see that we're not the only people who have realised that Osborne's cuts are not about to plunge the nation back into the penury of the 1930s. We're actually going back to the dark old days of 2001:

Because the government does not want to raise taxes to fund these plans, public spending is forecast to fall from 41% of GDP today to just 35% by the end of the decade.

That has prompted accusations that the government wants the country to go back to the late-1930s—and the Britain Orwell describes in his cri de coeur against poverty. The Office of Budget Responsibility, Britain's fiscal watchdog, stated that Mr Osborne's plans would force public spending down "below the previous post-war lows reached in 1957-58 and 1999-00 to what would probably be its lowest level in 80 years". "You're back to the land of Road to Wigan Pier", one BBC journalist roared. The opposition Labour party also sensed good electioneering material; on December 17th, Ed Miliband accused the prime minister of wanting to send Britain "back to the 1930s".

Hmm, well, yes:

Stripping away the hyperbole about Mr Osborne's plans shows that in reality they only amount to a reduction to the levels of public spending seen in 2002-03 in real terms, or 2001-02 in real terms per capita. The government could, back then, clearly afford a welfare state, as it will be able to still do in 2020.

You might think this a tad cynical, in fact, so do we think it a tad cynical. But then we are cynical about politics. Blair and Brown were elected: they stuck to the previous Tory budget plans for their first couple of years. Then they let rip: raising public spending as a portion of GDP from the levels it had so painfully been managed down to. No, this isn't bank bailouts, nor is it just the result of the recession. It was a deliberate plan for what they thought would be a better Britain (obviously we disagree on that betterness). All that is being done now is a reversal of that Brown Terror and splurge. You might agree that this should happen, you might think that it should not, but those screaming that it's a return to the 30s well, here's the cynicism: we think they're the people that that extra money has been spent on these past 12 years. No one likes to see the gravy train shunting back into the yard one last time, do they?

Modi’s development key: agricultural land rights liberalisation

Narendra Modi has stated that growth, controlling food-price inflation, improving farmers’ incomes and developing infrastructure are top priorities. Agricultural Land currently makes up ~60% of India’s total land area. Liberalising agricultural land usage laws has the immense potential to accomplish these, amongst other things: 1. Liberalising agricultural land usage rights increases both use and trade value for investors, developers etc. – farmers’ and landowners’ wealth will increase.

2. Enables farmers and landowners to develop their land and diversify their income and, since they know what parts of the land are relatively unproductive or infertile, they will be able to diversify their income (tourism, hospitality, factories etc.). At the moment, a lot of land remains uncultivated because agriculture is not financially feasible but undeveloped because of land usage policy.

3. Developing rural and semi-rural transport infrastructure becomes legally possible and, therefore, private entities will be more likely to invest in its development.

4. Further connecting the Indian hinterland via the aforementioned liberalisation of the private development of rural transport infrastructure.

5. Combating food-price inflation. Food-price inflation in India is not due to a shortage of food per se but, rather, the fact that the transport, storage and maintenance infrastructure is so poor or even non-existent in places. This means that close to 1/3 of the food rots or spoils before it even reaches the market. If it becomes legally feasible for interested parties to build and improve roads, storage facilities and so on, then this will efficiently preserve stock and connect the source of produce to the markets; food-price inflation will naturally decline via this supply-side reform.

6. Reducing farmers’ suicides and debt. Since farmers will have alternative sources of income, increased wealth and also increased income from actually being able to transport their food to market, more farmers will be able to service their debt and are less likely to commit suicide.

7. Economic counter-terrorism against Maoists. Maoists are scattered across rural and semi-rural parts of India and are particularly concentrated in areas that are rich in natural resources and where there is high unemployment. The aforementioned points in 3 and 4 will make it easier to combat them and alleviate the economic pressures in that lead to the violent backlashes.

8. Diversified employment opportunities. Opportunities for diversifying land use and earning through alternative sources of income means there is a chance to have jobs that require different skills and education in rural areas.

9. Easing pressure on urban India to accommodate migrant workers. From 7, there will be less incentive for younger migrants of rural origin to travel to cities for jobs (or at least the rate at which migration increases may not increase as much).

10. Increased private incentive to educate. 7 implies that there will be a greater need for certain skills and education to prepare workers for different types of employment.

On the subject of poverty porn

We here at the ASI thoroughly support the idea of food banks. Who wouldn't support the idea of voluntary cooperation to feed the hungry? Even, of a private sector organisation that was able to fill in for the malevolence and or incompetence of the State? However, that's not to say that we need go overboard and swallow uncritically everything we're being told by the poverty porn campaigners. To take just one example, this piece in The Independent.

 Christmas shoppers are expected spend £1.2bn today, as 13 million consumers hand over £21m every minute. But while those who can afford it stock up in the desperate rush for gifts on “Panic Saturday”, another 13 million people will have more sobering reasons to worry – living in poverty in a festive Britain characterised as “two nations” divided.

That 13 million living in poverty. It's a highly arguable number. Depends on what your definition of poverty is and how you're calculating it. And the way that it is calculated is that it's a measure of inequality, not of poverty. It is less than 60% of median income adjusted for household size either before or after housing costs. To get that 13 million figure it is after housing costs. If before, it is rather lower:

The number of people in the UK living in poverty fell by 100,000 in the past year to 9.7 million, according to official figures.

The data suggests the percentage of those in poverty is at its lowest level since the 1980s.

Poverty is defined in this context as when households have an income before housing costs below 60% of the median.

Note that this is still not a measure of poverty. It is a measure of the income distribution perhaps, of inequality, but not of actual poverty.

Fortunately we do also have a measurement of poverty, of actual material deprivation:

Trends in combined low income and material deprivation and severe poverty: New material deprivation items were introduced in 2010/11. The proportion of children living in low income (below 70 per cent of equivalised median household income, BHC) and material deprivation and severe poverty (below 50 per cent of median household income and in material deprivation) for 2011/12 has fallen to 12 per cent and 3 per cent respectively in 2011/12, representing a 1 percentage point fall for both measures compared to 2010/1122. As the proportion of households with children falling below the 70 per cent and 50 per cent low-income thresholds remained the same in 2011/12 compared to 2010/11, this fall was primarily driven by a decrease in the proportion of families experiencing material deprivation.

That is, whatever it is that is being done about poverty is reducing it by the measure that most of us would use in a colloquial sense. Material deprivation is falling. This might even be at the cost of more inequality in the use of those relative numbers. Possible causes there are reductions in general benefits and the targeting of that benefit and or tax system at the truly poor rather than simply at those just under 60% of median. Which, if reducing poverty is your goal seems like a pretty reasonable idea to us really.

What has really happened here is that in the past few decades the institutional definition of poverty has changed. Beveridge was not worrying about whether families had 50% or 60% of what everyone else had. He was worrying about whether there was dripping on the bread for tea. As that problem largely became solved the definition was shifted so that we are all urged now, in the official figures, to worry about inequality, not that actual poverty that so effectively tugs at our heartstrings.

Essentially, as the problem was solved the definition was changed so that there would still be something to berate us all with.

There are, of course, other inconsistencies in the numbers being thrown about:

The Trussell Trust warned it is expecting its busiest Christmas ever in providing emergency rations – with one million people now relying on food banks run by the charity and other organisations.

That's not so either. The general meaning, the colloquial takeaway from that, is that 1 million people are dependent all of the time on those food banks. Not so at all. The actual number is that over the past year 1 million people or so have been served by a food bank once or more times (and generally the limit is three days food in one visit and only three visits allowed). That gives us 8,200 people actually relying upon a food bank on any one day.

Yes, we can still say that that's too many people, we can still say that we're delighted that people give up their own time and money to fill in for the inefficiencies of the State. But it is a rather different picture of the scale of the problem being solved, isn't it?

As 2014 draws to a close there are 13 million people in poverty – including 27 per cent of the 2.5 million children in the UK, according to the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG).

Again this is inequality of income, this is the below 60% of median equivalised household income. This is not poverty nor is it material deprivation.

Inequality in the UK is now so extreme that the five richest families are wealthier than the bottom 20 per cent of the entire population, according to Oxfam.

Of course. This happens with absolutely every conceivable wealth distribution. For it is entirely possible to have negative wealth (in a manner that we do not record negative incomes). That newly minted Oxbridge graduate about to start earning £100k a year in the City is recorded as having negative wealth as a result of student loans. The truth is that if you've got a £10 note and no debts then you are richer than all of the bottom 20% households in the wealth distribution. No, not just richer than each one of them, richer than all of them in aggregate.

Meanwhile, the housing charity Shelter predicts that 93,000 children will be homeless this Christmas, as the number of homeless families trapped in temporary or emergency accommodation exceeds 60,000.

Interesting how that number is made up don't you think? As a society we provide temporary and emergency housing for those that need it. When we do so they are still classed as being homeless. This does have an inevitable effect: the crisis never goes away, does it?

The general numbers we get thrown at us about poverty in the UK are not actually about poverty in the general meaning of that word. They are about inequality in the distribution of income. Of course, you can worry about that inequality if you want to do so. But the reason those measurements have been changed, the reason that the "relative" so often gets dropped from "relative poverty", is because those who wish to spread this poverty porn know very well that most of us are concerned about, would happily do something about, actual poverty and as to inequality, well, there's a general reaction of "Meh".

As such we must be fed the figures about relative poverty so as to tug at our heartstrings as if it were absolute poverty, that material deprivation.

Or, the TL:DR version: they're fiddling the figures.

Finally, one further calculation. There's some 8,000 people a day receiving those food parcels. Let's say each parcel is worth perhaps £30 (we've got to use some sort of estimate after all). That's around and about a £90 million a year problem. One of the solutions proposed is that the minimum wage should be raised up to the Living Wage. That's a pay rise of £2,000 a year for 1.3 million people or so (taking only the number paid the current minimum wage, not including any effects on those between it and the Living Wage).

It's a £2.6 billion partial answer to a £90 million problem.

It might well be better to continue with the food bank solution.