What I Think

I started this post two weeks ago and then got sidetracked by other matters.

I have seen and read very little about the recent riots in England and so was particularly interested to hear what my good friend Maytrees and my brother Robin had to say on the subject.

This blog's stock in trade is flippancy, fecklessness and mockery (usually of myself), none of which characteristics are appropriate in the present circumstances. So what can I usefully add to the discussion?

When any social, political, religious or economic event touching our own arises, we tend to react instantaneously with a point of view that reflects or confirms our own prejudices. If we think that young people are lazy layabouts, these riots provide us will plenty of ammunition. Ditto if we think that this is all the fault of immigration, of the invasion of black culture, of the breakdown of parental authority, of a society of greed, and so on. One or more of the above may even be right for all I know. How would I know? I don't even live in England and the only one of the "trouble spots" that I have ever been to is Clapham Junction.

In one way, it doesn't matter very much what you or I think about these riots as it is unlikely that we will be called upon to do anything about them. (In another, deeper sense, it does matter very much.)  But it matters very much what those in a position to act think. If their analysis is wrong, whether by accident or design, the consequences can be horrific. To take a somewhat less explosive example: the euro debacle. It should have been obvious to those in the know that the euro, as conceived back in the 1990s, could not possibly survive a major financial crisis. I didn't realise this at the time, of course, but then I have no track record as an economist.

Here are a few facts culled from an interesting article by Phillip Blond:

• Since 1997 a single mother of two has seen her benefits increase by 85 percent. At the same time, the tax burden placed on a one-earner family (two parents + two children) on an average wage is 39 percent higher in Britain than that in other O.E.C.D. countries.
• The result is that children in Britain are now more than three times as likely to live in one-parent households than they were in 1972; a third to a half of all British children will at some point live in a one-parent family; and a third of all British children at any one time are living with just one parent. In 1971, less than 10 percent of all births in England and Wales were outside marriage; in 2008, 45 percent of all births were.
• This matters because unmarried parents have great trouble staying together. By the time a child is five, 43 percent of unmarried parents have broken up, versus 8 percent for married couples.
• Over 7 million Britons now live alone, compared to three million in 1971, creating widespread social anonymity and fragmentation. Since 70 percent of young offenders come from one-parent families and a third of all prisoners come from families so dysfunctional they were taken into care by the state, family structure is not something the state can afford to ignore.

That's one side of the picture. Here's the other:

• The bottom 50 percent of the British population had 12 percent of liquid wealth, excluding property, in 1976. By 2003, that share had fallen to 1 percent, shutting the path to prosperity for those at the bottom. 
• An O.E.C.D. survey in 2010 found that Britain has the highest correlation between parental income and outcomes for children, and therefore the lowest rate of social mobility in the developed world.
• From the perspective of those who rioted, perhaps the most evident indication of how the game has moved against them is migration. Thirty years ago unskilled working-class kids could at least get jobs in shops or factories. Today these youths have lost out to new migrants — an astounding 99.9 percent of the rise of employment (not jobs) in Labour years is accounted for by foreign-born workers.
• In conclusion, the rioters are shamefully emblematic of modern Britain. Their values have striking parallels with Britain’s current elite — not least because the creation of a morally denuded and economically marooned class at the bottom of society is the outcome of an elite that has embraced self-serving economics and the value system that endorses it: libertarianism under the guise of liberalism

I would like to come back to this question at a later date.