Who Is The Chancellor Trying To Kid?

As I've explained before on this Blog, the notion of linking a CEO's pay to a company's market value is not a very reliable measure of the CEO's performance. Suppose a CEO receives a £2 bonus for every £200 increase in the market value of the company. That would be a more watertight system if the CEO was responsible for every pound of that £200. But that's not the case; a CEO of an oil company, an energy company, a steel company, or a timber company is not responsible for the fluctuations in the global demand for those raw materials, nor the global supply, nor the price of other raw materials linked to the production of the products. Consequently, a CEO who claimed he was responsible for his Timber company's 300% increase in market value would be being very flexible with the truth.

Anyone who understands economics would know this. I think George Osborne understands at least the basics of economics - which means he also probably understands that many of his claims of success in the recent Budget are also as specious as those of our aforementioned Timber company's CEO.

When George Osborne talks about his successes in relation to economic growth and lower unemployment (his two favourites) he is simply listing facts that are largely beyond his control and taking credit for them. Increased economic growth and increased employment are going on while George Osborne is chancellor, but they are going on in spite of his being chancellor not because of it. To take credit for this is to commit a fallacy called the cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, which is a with event x therefore y causative fallacy.

I'm sure George Osborne knows how little Chancellors actually control the economy - so in taking credit for events that are beyond his causal power he must hope that enough people won't notice and will give him largely underserved credit. Also, let's not forget - taking credit for success stories gives them the ability to blame the opposition for unsuccessful outcomes in their past legacies.

In recent decades, the three principal causes for the UK's economic growth have been:

1) The flexibility of our market economy and the embracing of free market trade.

That was largely thanks to Margaret Thatcher's government and their pro-privatisation and deregulation reforms, as well as dealing with stultifying unions choking the British economy and inefficient British businesses that were being artificially propped up.

2) The prudent use of interest rates to manage demand at a domestic level.

That was due in no small part to our no longer being subservient to the Exchange Rate Mechanism.

3) The increased demand (and prices) for the knowledge-based services we provided throughout the world in a transition away from such large-scale manufacturing.

This was due to globalisation and the ability to capitalise on specialisation. Incidentally, when UK folk lament the loss of manufactured goods in this country, they often overlook the fact that we are still huge manufacturers - it's just that our production is not so much about goods anymore, it is much more service-oriented.

Once the Thatcher reforms were in place, and once we escaped the thrall of the ERM (both Conservative initiatives), future Chancellors like George Osborne were set up with a large box of cigars.

With that in mind we return back to George Osborne's Budget. The economy is getting better, but economies do - they fluctuate, largely independent of Osborne's initiatives. Here's an analogy. At the moment I feel really ill - I have a sore throat, I'm full of cold and I am continually coughing. Suppose I tell George Osborne that I'm going to take a couple of weeks off work and have lots of rest. Osborne says "No, that won't make you better - have some of my magic baked beans, they will make you feel better". I take them every day, but I still decide the rest will do me good. In a week or so I begin to feel better, and on seeing the improvement George Osborne tells me that it was my taking the magic beans that made me better, not the rest. Just as anyone who understands sore throats, colds and coughs knows that the rest would have made me better anyway without the beans - anyone who understands economies understands that global demand and global supply at both short-term and long-term levels are the decider of economies, not Chancellors. Chancellors do not exactly do 'nothing', but they also should understand that the national well-being is largely beyond their scope.

The same is true of employment - governments don't do 'nothing' - but they don't have much of a long-term effect on employment. It is easy to temporarily lower the unemployment level (apprenticeships and renaming statuses are two good ways), but if demand exceeds supply in the labour market, the successes will fluctuate and usually be short-lived.

The next time you see a politician taking credit for economic growth, be sure to scoff. And remember that exclaiming a strong causal link between the state of the economy and the performance of the government has a two-way effect - you can attempt to take unjust credit for good outcomes when you're in government, but you can also attempt to discredit previous governments by laying all the bad outcomes at their door. I'd advise that both should be undertaken with very sober judgement.  

Diversity: When It's Good & When It's Bad

An interesting turn up this week after the further developments in the big bang theory (not the sitcom), the Daily Mail's Ephraim Hardcastle made an insinuation that two women (scientists Maggie Aderin-Pocock and Hiranya Peiris) were invited to comment on the BBT report on Newsnight for the purposes of gender diversity rather than for their expertise. UCL Professor David Price responded by writing a very good letter of indignation to the egregious Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre (see link at bottom of page for full article)*. Naturally, it’s pretty obvious that Maggie Aderin-Pocock and Hiranya Peiris were brought in for their expertise and not because of their gender – but just as obvious to me is that any pressure felt by institutions to fill a particular gender quota for the sake of diversity is often a case of misunderstanding the true qualities of diversity.

When people extol the virtues of diversity they are often actually arguing against it. Suppose in a think tank there are two men - a white man and a black man, and they disagree on a particularly important issue related to the project. What's the most relevant difference: the difference in their skin colour or the difference in their viewpoint? Clearly it's the difference in their viewpoint. The resultant brainstorming would likely involve a revision of thought for one of them, or maybe a coalescence in which both were able to feed off each other and improve their views to strike a balance. Their diversity in skin colour is inconsequential to the task, just as would be the case if their main diversity was in gender.

Yet whenever we read about positive discrimination and increase in diversity we are usually reading about some attempt to get more women in Parliament or more ethnic minorities in an institution, as though gender or ethnicity are the real measure of diversity not viewpoints and ideas. Of course, you'll be inclined to argue that gender diversity and ethnic diversity brings diversity of perspective, and that's true, but naturally it's better to start with diversity of viewpoint and ideas irrespective of gender or ethnicity rather than starting your focus on gender diversity and ethnic diversity and hope it brings diversity of perspective.

The thing about diversity of viewpoints and ideas is that a balance must be struck. Too much diversity is bad because it leads to erratic thinking. For example, at a science convention I don't want the attendees to be such a diverse bunch that some subscribe to phlogiston theory, or young earth creationism, or astrology - because that involves so much diversity that it contains nonsense. But too little diversity diminishes the variance of innovation, and it stultifies the wider perspective, which is not desired either.

Moreover, it must be noted that diversity in science is not the same as diversity in the whole of the UK. Scientists have a tangibly shared goal of obtaining evidence and testing hypotheses to achieve a consistent body of theories that explain physical reality. A nation doesn't have such a tight shared goal, so it is harder to know the balance.

As a word of warning, it should be noted as well that what people say in the abstract often sounds good when it disguises what is actually meant in the particular. The other day I heard a priest from Northern Ireland state very eloquently that when there is diversity of opinion it is wrong to impose a too rigid standard on one kind of belief. Sounds good, and eloquently put, except that it turns out that he was talking about homosexuality - and the 'too rigid standard' he was worried about was the one that champions the liberty of homosexuals. I heard an Imam extol the virtues of adhering to the law of the land, only to later reveal that he won't be satisfied until the law of the land is Sharia Law. I once heard an American pastor castigate religious extremism with aplomb, until it emerged that the religious belief he found 'extreme' was one that denies a 6,000 year old earth. So be careful to read between the linguistic lines.

Lastly, what sometimes looks like diversity is actually the opposite of diversity. For example, it looks good for diversity that we have multifarious belief systems like Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism, Sikhism, and Scientology. But I think they are bad for humanity, and thus, I would love to live in a world in which such beliefs were weeded out of the population by rational enquiry and intelligent scrutiny. That is to say, they look like they increase diversity because they are different, but in fact, I think they are a lot of the same kind of falsehood, and they stifle diversity by locking people into spuriousness that can only retard diversity.

The pros and cons of diversity at a general level

Diversity has its downside of course - it can create tension, make communities inimical to community-spirit, impair social cohesion, and foster resentment because of cultural or linguistic barriers. Plus it creates perverse incentives to artificially engender diversity by legislation, which always brings with it the consequence of artificially disadvantaging others in the process. Further, in championing a diverse mix of people in the hope of eradicating prejudice it can have the opposite effect too, as spending more time with people different from you can cause you to realise how little you have in common with them and how little you like them.

But once people can transcend any feelings of raw tension and insularity they'll find diversity is a wonderful thing (although the fruition can take years). It is great for soliciting opinions, forming think tanks, forecasting, or debating topics, because a diverse array of minds is of huge benefit to the group or project. And that's to say nothing of all the socio-cultural benefits associated with diversity in friendships, integration, learning from one another, employment of skills, cuisine, fashion, art, crafts, engineering, and so on.

Finally, a lack of diversity can also be bad by virtue of the fact that reliance on one thing makes people vulnerable. The Great Irish Famine wasn’t just due to unfortunate infestations in potatoes – it was over-reliance on one single crop that severely added to the plight.  The Irish found to their cost that it is important to diversify, because diversity leads to increased qualitative change. It is largely because of diversity that you can be sure that our technology will continue to progress - we diversify our skills and our imagination by not having an over-reliance on too narrow a range, and this aids the human development in a multitude of ways.

Let's continue to champion diversity - but let's ensure it's the positive kind of diversity that's interested in ideas, viewpoints, personality and broad perspectives, not the spurious kind that has virtually no bearing on these qualities.  

* For a full look at the article mentioned in my opening gambit, see here  

** Photo courtesy of withoutexception.co.uk

Robin Hood Charity or Not Giving A Friar Tuck

You may have heard of a tax called the Robin Hood Tax - it's been getting a lot of attention recently.

The website I linked starts with the words - "A tax on banks..."

First things first, it's not a tax on banks, it's a tax on financial transactions.

And then it goes on - "The Robin Hood Tax is justice. The banks can afford it. The systems are in place to collect it. It won't affect ordinary members of the public, their bank accounts or their savings. It's fair, it's timely, and it's possible."

Ok, before we get to the positives, let's have a reality check - I'm afraid that's just not going to be the case - the cost of this tax will be borne by ordinary members of the public, largely through their pensions and/or their savings. Just about every tax of this kind is filtrated down to end users. If the government suddenly whopped an arbitrary tax on Argos, the result would be a price hike at Argos, and it would probably culminate in Argos going out of business. Similarly, a tax on financial transactions will hit the customer making the transaction, either in their pockets or in prohibiting them from making the transaction.

The big problem with the Robin Hood tax for individual nations is that any government implementing it will put its own nation's financial sector at a disadvantage compared with all the countries that do not implement it. It is potentially terrible for early adopters (as the disastrous outcome of Sweden's adoptions showed, who lost about 60% of their banking trade to the UK as a result of transaction taxes). Here's why it's bad for early adopters.

I said that if the government suddenly whopped an arbitrary tax on Argos, the result would be a price hike in Argos goods, which as a consequence would probably eventuate in no one buying anything at Argos. If the government suddenly whopped an arbitrary Argos-tax on Argos then customers would make a rational decision and switch to every shop that isn't Argos. In the analogy to financial transactions, the world's countries are represented by shops in the UK, with the UK being Argos. The imposition of transaction taxes on UK bank transactions by the government would be equivalent to Argos lobbying the government to impose an Argos-tax on Argos. That is to say, if the UK government introduces a Robin Hood tax on UK financial transactions in its own banking system, then UK financial services will simply relocate to countries without a Robin Hood tax, similar to how Starbucks, Amazon and Google use tax havens to do their accounting.  

For those who don't relocate, the Robin Hood tax would mean increased risks for speculative bankers, and a disincentive for ordinary users to save for the future. The general reason that taxes on banking transactions are unwise is that they have a different true value to their face value. As an analogy, take car insurance. Betty pays £350 car insurance to be insured by Admiral, but she knocks down a man and permanently disables him, costing Admiral £750,000. The true value and the face value differ by £749,650. A 10% tax on Betty's value costs her an extra £35. If Admiral taxes Betty 10% to insure against the full loss it's going to add £75,000 to her premium. This is what will happen in the banking world with transaction tax - it will encourage risk and injudicious spending for the bankers, and it will be an increase that is passed onto the banks' customers.

And as regards the disincentive for ordinary users - to give you an illustration of why a surcharge incentivises imprudence, suppose all banks implemented a 10% service tax every time you used the cash machine. In response people would make fewer withdrawals of larger amounts, and disposable spending would increase as a result.

Now let's look at the positives. The idea that relatively wealthy people can be taxed to give directly to relatively poor people has plenty of mileage - but that is the primary way on which Robin Hood taxes should be capitalised. There is so much need in the world, and in the absence of enough drive to do more, I support this kind of enforced-charity.  But if this is going to work properly, the effort needs to be a collective, with every developed country being co-signatories in this policy. This will guard against the disadvantaging of those who sign up for it.

What will also really help is when banking becomes more advanced, enabling individuals to simply place money directly in other people's accounts - it'd work like the sponsor a child systems work, but much more directly. This has been tried in Kenya with a charity called GiveDirectly - it is a charity that passes donations straight to poor families in Kenya (among other places) - and I believe it has yielded good results.

A similar scheme has been tried in Uganda too. Poor entrepreneurs are given grants by people like you and me, and they manage to achieve a high rate of return. This emerged from a study by Chris Blattman, Nathan Fiala and Sebastian Martinez. They helped the Ugandan government give out $10,000 to young people in various project groups, as well as some random selections. Per person, these donations worked out about twice the annual income of the young people in question. Blattman and his colleagues then tracked their stories over the following four years, and they found that many of the young people set themselves up in a new skilled trade or as budding entrepreneurs who were able to transform their opportunities and help others too.

Naturally in terms of meeting global need, projects like this are part of an incipient process. They are the first signs of what can emerge when the banking system can facilitate more and more personal accounts and easier access to charitable donations. Benefactors can sponsor individuals more directly; they can exchange letters, and play a more intimate part in helping those that that currently can't get themselves on a higher rung of the economic ladder do so.

While it is not without its problems, I'm all for the kind of Robin Hood Tax that helps lift the world's most desperate people out of poverty and into an economic system in which they learn skills and trade self-sufficiently in a country with right of ownership and a stable government enforcing the rule of law.

* Photo courtesy of creative-collaborations

On Tipping

I hold the view that being generous is good, but equally that it is nigh-on impossible to be generous without also conferring a benefit to the self. Quite simply, being generous makes us feel good, so all acts of generosity are at least in some part self-beneficial too.

Tipping is a social convention whereby in most cases one's generosity aids lower paid workers. But tipping also encourages a better relationship between service provider and customer, and it incentivises a better service too. This varies, though, according to the service. When we tip taxi drivers we pay into an optimisation ethos which encourages every customer to give a tip and encourages every taxi driver to deliver a good service. I suppose a good service for a taxi driver is turning up on time, not taking a circuitous route, and being friendly and chatty. Given that we expect the first two as being integral to the service, I suspect the tip variance is mostly to do with the personality of the taxi driver. I feel more compelled to tip a friendly talkative taxi driver than I do a terse grumpy one.

When it comes to waiters and waitresses I think things are different. Tips for waiters seem to be part of a social custom that increases their low wages to a more decent level. I'm not sure that is as bad as many people claim. A tipping system helps restaurant owners employ good staff - the more reliant a waiter is on his or her tips the greater the incentive staff have to be friendly and proficient. If wages were higher then prices would be higher too. Lower wages and tips means lower food prices and the same wages for waitresses. An optional tip service incentivises friendliness and proficiency, and leaves it to the customers' discretion whether or not they want to contribute to the wages of the staff. Price-sensitivity is a factor too. With tipping policies more generous customers pay more for their meal by leaving a tip than stingy customers do by not leaving a tip.

But whichever way we cut the cloth, there is little rhyme or reason to it. There are many low wage workers that we do not tip due to a lack of social custom. And similarly there are people who earn more than us that we still tip due to social custom. We don't tip staff behind an information reception desk, nor the till operator in Sainsbury's even though many of them earn the same sort of money as hairdressers and window cleaners whom we do tip. Conversely, a taxi driver probably earns more per hour than many of his low wage tipping customers, and a painter or builder is often tipped by clients less well off than himself.

Clearly a big factor in tipping is service and intimacy. The relationship a client develops with a builder working on his kitchen for three days may be sufficient to make him feel compelled to offer a tip. On the other hand, a McDonald's worker who earns less than your builder probably won't get a tip on the basis that they only spend a minute serving you.

In restaurants it is often the case that tips do not go to the individual waiting on you but into a collective tip jar that's shared out at the end of the week (this is classed as taxable income in the UK by the way). Is this a better policy than each individual keeping their own tips? Mostly yes. Although there is one obvious exception. When tips are pooled there is less incentive for Lazy Larry to work super hard and be super polite. If he under-performs he can still be carried by Diligent Dave and Hard-working Helen, and reap a proportion of the total tips collected. But aside from that, it seems that the policy of sharing out tips works best, because it means the bar staff, and staff behind the scenes receive a share too and are not penalised for not dealing with the customers directly, despite working just as hard and being on similarly low wages.

Lastly, I've considered that tipping is a sign of generosity which confers benefits on the self - and that this is probably primary over our desire to help low earners. To see why that might be the case, consider this hypothetical scenario. You're on holiday in Cornwall, eating on your own in a restaurant you're never likely to visit again. There is one other customer in the restaurant. A coin will be flipped; if it's heads each of you leaves a £5 tip on your table; if it's tails the other person leaves £10 and you leave nothing. As far as helping low paid workers goes, both results are exactly the same - but I'll bet most people wouldn't be wholly indifferent to how the coin lands.

The upshot is, the world of tipping is built on social protocols and on conferring pleasure on the self by distilling pleasure from being generous. It is not all about helping low paid workers, because there are a lot of low paid workers that is it not customary to tip. It is not all about performance, because we tip people even when they have under-performed. It is much to do with the good that comes from generosity and the rapport developed between clients and service providers over a sustained working period.

Just a closing thought: if being deserving of a tip is predicated on a sustained short-term relationship, low pay and (in addition) importance of the service to you, then perhaps nurses and firemen are good candidates for tipping.

Euthyphro’s Dilemma Solved

In Plato’s famous dialogue we are given the classic philosophical conundrum called Euthyphro’s dilemma:

Are things good because God commands them, or does God command them because they are good?

(NB: Good here refers to a standard of good distinct from God and to which God may be subject).

Apparently we are told that philosophers, theists and atheists have debated this for centuries, continually reaching a stalemate.  When I first read Euthyphro’s dilemma in my formative years I couldn't really see why it was such a poser - it seems pretty easy to solve with a little economic analysis.

If what is meant by God is the God who is thought to be omnipotent, omniscient, omni-benevolent and the all-loving creator of everything in nature, then it stands to reason that God does not command good things because they are good, because that would be to suggest that goodness has an existence independent of God.  I don't think a creator God that has the properties of omnipotence, omniscience, omni-benevolence and all-lovingness can be subject to a standard higher than Himself, because if such a God exisits then 'omni' properties contain the very properties from which such qualities emanate.

Given the foregoing, it must be the case, then, that things are good because God commands them. And unless we want to make the injudicious suggestion that a God with 'omni' properties commands anything arbitrarily, we must say that the goodness that emerges because God commands it is, in fact, due to God being the epitome of goodness. Hence, there’s no real problem if we say that qualities like goodness, love and grace are inherent properties of the Divine mind, and are thus inextricably attached to Divinity. 

The solution to Euthyphro’s dilemma seems quite straightforward to me. Things are good because God commands them, but God commands them because what is being commanded is an inherent part of, and inextricable from, God's own nature.

* Photo courtesy of christian.resourses

This Disgrace Mustn't Go On....

When people in poorer countries can't trade freely, they suffer. One of the biggest barriers to free trading for poorer people (like many in Africa, Asia and South America) is when they are priced out of the market by richer providers (like Americans). If this was going on in a free market capacity there would be less to object to - but it isn't. Government subsidies and high tariffs on imports are two examples of how richer countries are distorting the free market by preventing poorer countries from competing to sell their resources. The European Union subsidises European farmers and the American government subsidies American farmers, placing African, Asian and South American farmers at a huge disadvantage, because they cannot easily sell their own produce as they are unable to compete with richer countries in the price market. When George Bush affords American farmers 180 billion dollars in subsidy deals to buy American votes (which he did when he was President), he depresses prices across the globe, which robs unsubsidised (and much poorer) Africans Asians and South Americans of their ability to be able to sell their crops competitively in the global market. This costs poorer countries tens of billions of dollars in lost revenue.

When President Roosevelt originally set up farmers' subsidies, the policy was intended as a temporary plaster over the bleeding wound of the American depression. In the modern age where we have a widespread global economy, these government subsidies and import tariffs are a disaster for those struggling to make a living in the developing world. To their credit, New Zealand, a country more dependent on agriculture than America, ended their farm subsidies in the 1980s when the government was short of money - and the whole country has seen hugely positive rewards as a result.

In subsidising farmers, the governments in question don't just disadvantage those struggling in developing countries, they retard innovation locally too. Stopping the subsidies helps farmers explore new market potential; it incentivises them to innovate, to diversify their output, and to generally be more economically prudent without government funds to fall back on. When a government subsidises farmers it removes some of the need to run a business in accordance with market demands and price fluctuations. Non-subsidised business owners are much more alert to profit and loss signals, just as any business that makes decisions with other people's money tends to make those decisions less prudently than with their own money. Furthermore, business owners who receive subsidies try to curry favour with the politicians handing out the cash, when they should be trying to win the customers by providing a good business practice and competitive prices.

Farm subsidies in the shape of the very rich giving to the relatively rich at the expense of the relatively poor are a disgrace - and no nation can claim any kind of moral accomplishment in the global scene while they continue to engage in this egregious policy of subsidising their own at the expense of those desperate to get a stronger foot in the free market.

* Photo courtesy of quicktake.wordpress

What Are You More Afraid Of - Cancer Or Hell?

I'm pretty well read when it comes to the works of George Orwell. Here, though, is a quote from Orwell that I hadn't come across before:

"Belief in the next world does not influence conduct as it would if it were genuine. Most Christians profess to believe in Hell. Yet have you ever met a Christian who seemed as afraid of Hell as he was of cancer?"

George Orwell finds it irrational that people aren't more afraid of something as eternally terrible as Hell, in comparison to something as temporally terrible as cancer. Orwell is missing something obvious here. Most Christians aren't afraid of Hell because they feel confident that they won't be going there. And presumably most atheists aren't afraid of Hell because they don't think it exists. Therefore, it would make sense for fear of cancer to be more ubiquitous in this world than fear of Hell.

An Inconsistency In The Judicial Process

A thought occurred to me today regarding an inconsistency in the judicial system - one that you may not have noticed. Prior to being called as a juror for a case, the court ensures that none of the prospective jury members knows anyone involved in the case for fear of compromising it. This is fine - any information that could impair a juror's impartiality is rightly declared beforehand. But as far as I know, the court never asks whether would-be jurors wish to disclose any strong moral beliefs or traumatic experiences that would compromise their ability to judge the case in a balanced and impartial manner. This seems to me to be a case of guarding against one kind of potential impartiality while at the same time blatantly failing to guard against other potential impartialities of a moral or emotional kind.

Suppose you're an innocent female biologist on trial for malpractice. You'd probably want to feel assured that no one in the jury is a fanatical creationist who thinks that all evolutionists subscribe to Social Darwinism. Or suppose you're an innocent Polish immigrant on trial for mugging a British pensioner. You'd probably want to feel assured that no one in the jury is an anti-immigrant xenophobe. Or suppose you're an innocent Catholic priest accused of child abuse. You'd probably want to feel assured that no one in the jury has suffered horrific abuse in a Catholic Magdalene asylum in their own childhood. Or lastly, suppose you're an innocent black youth on trial for beating up a white youth. You'd probably want to feel assured that no one in the jury is a hardened racist.

If the pre-trial policy is that information should be disclosed if it could affect a juror's ability to assess the case impartially, then strong moral beliefs and traumatic experiences ought to fall into that category too, because they can have a significant impact on impartiality. Given the relatively short time it would take to invite prospective jurors to disclose these potential partialities, I find it an oversight on their part that they are not part of the court's considerations.

To read an older Blog post of mine on further judicial flaws, see here.

Why Bankers' Bonuses Should Be *More*, Not Less

You may have noticed there has been a lot of indignation over the notion of bankers' bonuses - particularly since the financial crisis. Mention the two words "Bankers' bonuses" and most people you meet are likely to react as though you've told them they are being forced to spend a cold, rainy weekend in Bognor with Diane Abbott, Mehdi Hasan, Vanessa Feltz and Robert Kilroy-Silk. But aren't they onto something? Surely it makes perfect sense that bankers who make losses for the bank should not be given bonuses - it's the most obvious thing in the world, right? It might be the most obvious thing in the world, except for the fact that it is wrong.

For a lot of complex reasons that I won't bore you with in this Blog post (but on which I do elaborate in more detail here for those that are interested), if a bank can get away with apportioning some of the salaries in the form of bonuses, it is better than paying inflated salaries. So bonuses often aren't the financial bogey that people think they are - but let's get to the heart of it, though, with some questions:

Isn't it true that sometimes bonuses are a bogey?

Yes, but consider who's to blame.

Reckless bankers?

Sometimes, but the problem is underpinned by government interference. Consider that bankers were not regulated 100 years ago, yet banks were still full of profit-seekers. What changed is that a culture of recklessness came about primarily due to guarantees bestowed by the government.

But how do government guarantees encourage recklessness - bankers will only make deals they think are profitable, won't they?

The problem is, if depositors no longer benefit to the same extent by bankers' felicity, their incentive to look for prudence is diminished. When the government guarantees the losses of depositors, the depositors no longer have to monitor carefully whether the bank is a prudent lender. But as well, in such a culture, depositors are primed to favour riskier bankers, because higher risks increase the chances of higher rates of interest for their depositors in successes, whereas they only increase the chances of a government (i.e. taxpayers) bail out in failures.

Ah, so the government are the ones laying down a cushion for recklessness?

Primarily, yes.

What's the solution - stop the nationalisation and the bail outs?

It would have been better to never have started them. It's difficult to withdraw now as the State acts (among other things) to protect the capital of ordinary citizens whose money is tied up in failing banks.

However, as regular readers of my Blog probably hoped would be the case - I do have a solution. Scrap bankers' salaries and get them to work on a bonus-only culture relative to their success. This is not alien to many bankers anyway; a great many have variable pay in shares, or in a bank bonus, contingent on the share price. These are reliable indicators because share prices are a good measure of a bank's performance - but the system probably needs tweaking to give greater incentive against failure.

Which bankers are most likely to be attracted to such a pay structure? Fairly evidently it is bankers with the greatest ability to make lots of money for their bank. It is for that reason that the system of bankers selling their talents for pay-based rewards would work best. It's best for talented bankers with financial nous and business acumen, it's good for shareholders, and it's good for the economy too.

To see why it would work, consider a car boot sale as an analogy. With car boot sales sellers pay a few pounds for a pitch because they expect to make more than the pitch fee in items sold. A car boot sale with a £5 pitch fee is pretty standard in the UK. If all prospective car boot sale sellers in the UK were suddenly hit with a mandatory £15 sellers' fee you'd find people with lower quality items would be less inclined to bother buying a pitch. Those with lots of quality goods might still be tempted, though, because they would have confidence that their net sales would exceed the £15 pitch cost. Charging a pitch fee, be it £5, £10, £15 or whatever is a great way to organise a car boot sale, because the fee, and the effort to drive down and set up, attracts only sellers who think they have enough quality items to sell and return a profit.

Imagine what would happen if, instead of charging for a pitch, car boot organisers started to pay people to set up stalls. There'd be recklessness, as sellers would turn up in their droves, pitching lower quality items safe in the knowledge that they'll make a bit of money anyway.

Now apply that to bankers pitching for their own successes. Just as you don't need to pay car boot sellers with lots of quality goods to sell, you don't need to pay bankers with lots of business acumen and financial nous inflated salaries to perform well. To get them to make good decisions, you only need to give them share-based or bonus-based incentives to do what they do best, because their own wealth is tied up in their success.

The banking system would be much better if bankers' bonuses were more, not less, and their salaries capped at zero - because increased bankers' bonuses would mean increased revenue for the bank as a result of prudent investments, or increased revenue for the bank as a result of overseeing a profitable merger for which they receive a percentage of the bank's often very large fee.

* Photo courtesy of bbc.co.uk

Be Encouraged: Why Writing Blogs Is A Bit Like Publishing Books

There are perhaps 3 main rewards for writers:

1) The personal enrichment that comes from forming your ideas and writing about them. 

2) Being able to share your writing and attaining positive* public feedback (in the form of praise, prestige, admiration, notability and reputation).

3) Making a living (or in some cases a fortune) from doing something you love.

Not every writer has number 3, but every writer can have numbers 1 and 2 (in the case of 2, assuming they're any good). 

For those for whom number 3 is a bonus and not to be expected, and for those not being paid by newspapers or magazines, 1 and 2 can still be obtained either through writing books and attempting to get them published or through writing Blogs.

If we assume the pleasure of 1 is steady irrespective of 2 (that certainly is the case for me), then a writer has an interesting consideration regarding number 2.  Blog writers like me are not being paid for Blog posts, but we can share information to a wide-ish audience, and obtain positive public feedback.

Playing around gracefully with hypotheticals, as I often like to do, I wonder what sort of value I (or anyone like me) would place on number 2 in all sorts of scenarios. Suppose there were 50,000 impressed readers reading my Blog for free each week vs. 50 super-duper impressed readers who would pay £2 per week to read my Blog (I doubt it - but humour me). What's better for the writer - all that adulation and no money, or 0.1% of the adulation and £100 per week? What about 100,000 non-paying impressed readers per week vs.100 super-duper impressed readers who would pay £2 per week to read my Blog (earning £200 per week for me) - which of those is preferable to most writers, or is it fairly evenly split? Perhaps the mass adulation would be worth losing £100 per week for but not £200. I don't know. There are lots of other factors too, and I haven't given them a lengthy consideration.

In real life terms, though, how might my Philosophical Muser Blog fit into the above consideration? Let's start by asking the following question. Suppose you're a budding writer - would you be happy if you wrote a book, had it published, and it sold 4562 copies?** There are, of course, a lot of variables attached to that question (even aside from financial ones). When it comes to expectations, if you're Lawrence Krauss or Francis Collins then 4562 copies sold would be a flop. If you're JK Rowling then 4562 copies sold would be a disaster. If you're an unknown sending off a book you're not that pleased with or bothered about then 4562 copies sold would be quite a success. If you're an unknown who has written what you think is your magnum opus then the disappointment of only 4562 copies sold may outweigh the pleasure at getting a publishing deal.

The number 4562 is not insignificant in my deliberations. My Blog reader count is 188,488. If we say that each hit has an average time of 2 minutes, which accounts for those who spend less time per hit and those who spend more, then that amounts to a total of 9124 hours for my aggregate readership. If we say that an average regular size book takes 2 hours to read, then 9124 hours of Blog reading is equivalent to the reading time of 4562 books. Thus, if I take into account only the information shared and the readership interest, then my writing this Philosophical Muser Blog has been roughly equivalent to writing a book that has sold 4562 copies.

As it happens, I am writing books as well, but haven't yet reached the stage of attempted publication. Until then I can dabble in my Blog writing. I wanted to write this to encourage fellow Blog writers, and others writing pro bono and au gratis - if as yet you're happy with the rewards of 1) the personal enrichment that comes from forming your ideas and writing about them, and 2) being able to share your writing and attaining positive public feedback - then what you're doing has some of the rewards of writing a book and having it published, so be encouraged to keep up the good work.  

* That's not to say negative feedback isn't valuable - but if we are being truthful, no writer really likes it.

** You may say selling 4562 copies has the added benefit of enhancing your future chances of being published, but consider it may have the opposite effect. Having a first relatively unsuccessful book published might be a springboard to future success, but equally its relative failure might put off any future publishers.



Women Drivers & The Counter-Productive European Court of Justice

My car insurance is due soon. I hadn't kept up with all the arcane ways that EU legislation affects UK business, but being curious about whether women still get cheaper car insurance than men on grounds of being statistically safer drivers who have fewer accidents, I looked online and found this:

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that the long-established practice of setting insurance prices according to gender is illegal discrimination. The Court's decision forced members of the European Union to introduce a ban on gender-based pricing.

So, in basic terms, car insurers used to yield to market-based risk calculation (using a reliable tool called actuarial mathematics) and offer statistically safer drivers cheaper premiums (perfectly sensibly, in my view). Then the EU decided that it's much better to ignore all this data and assent to a spurious anti-unfair-discrimination policy, while failing to see the irony that in penalising statistically safer people for purposes of parity they are unfairly discriminating against safer drivers. This is beyond absurd. The primary measure of unfair discrimination in actuarial analyses is not treating different people differently, it is treating different people the same. Women are statistically safer drivers than men, which means they are cheaper customers, which means to increase their premium to the same as men is to unfairly discriminate against women.

The reasons why women are safer drivers are well known. Women are, on average, less likely to have fast cars, they drive fewer miles, they drive slower, they take fewer risks, and they are less aggressive than men. Giving women a lower premium based on those facts amounts to a simple and rational statistical evaluation of risk. The same is true of other considerations too - age, post code, miles per year, type of car, and so forth - each of these are important factors in risk evaluation, and the ECJ should leave well alone. The free market is the best tool for eradicating unfair discrimination in business, because pretty much any time a company decided to discriminate against women, black people, gay people, tall people, fat people, or whomever, they would pay for it with a reduction in profits*.

Of course, we know the probable motive in the ECJ's equalisation of gender - it is to guard against people with identical data having different premiums based solely on gender. But that misses the whole quintessence of how competition works in the free market. Suppose we have Jack and Jill, who are the same age, with the same car, same post code, and driving the same miles per year - the ECJ would have it that they should be given equal premiums because to do otherwise would be to discriminate on the only variable factor - gender.

But that is not what happens - while the data picks up facts like age, car type, post code, and miles per year, it doesn't account for those significant differences - speed of driving, risk-taking, aggression and other factors of mentality behind the wheel that make women more likely to be safer and have fewer accidents, and better candidates for cheaper premiums. The ECJ is guarding against the general being applied to the particular - but this is part of what makes competitive business healthy. In a free market we can work under an assumption of cheaper insurance premiums for a safer driving record at the individual level anyway - so it's a law that only actually compounds what already happens.

But we can extend far beyond that too - competing firms can solicit new custom by offering deals to acquire that custom. This proves very effective in the insurance market: some providers specialise in good deals for modified cars (like my modified Subaru), some specialise in good deals for women, some specialise in good deals for the elderly, some for first time drivers, and so on. Insurance companies have asymmetry of information when it comes to those vital premium-changers - they have transparency with data like age, post code, miles per year, type of car - but they don't have anything like the same transparency with things like speed of driving, risk-taking, aggression and other factors of mentality behind the wheel - which is where the actuary matters.

A company that's free to offer deals for women is acting on probability related to those invisible factors - but that also means women are free to look for insurers sensitive to such data, as are Subaru drivers, as are the elderly, and so forth. That's how beautifully the market for insurance rewards this innovation. If women are consistently safer, then they are consistently on average cheaper customers, which rewards those companies that are prepared in response to lower the premium for women. But if the data is spurious and women are less consistently as safe as the premium indicates then those same companies will incur a loss and adjust their women-favoured premiums to accord with that. It's a hugely efficient system that the ECJ hasn't properly factored into its considerations.

* Here's a simple illustration to show why discrimination hurts profits. Imagine there are just three beer-drinking people (Jonny, Billy and Jenny) in a village of one thousand people. Jonny makes home brewed beer to sell to his two friends Billy and Jenny, both of whom love home brewed beer and will pay £3 a pint for it, each drinking around 30 pints per month. Jonny suddenly develops a sexist mentality and refuses to sell beer to Jenny on the grounds that she's a woman. As a result, Jenny spends her beer money on other things and Jonny only sells beer to Billy. Clearly being a sexist has hit Jonny in the pocket. How much has Jonny's dissemination cost him per month? Selling 30 pints per month to Billy and Jenny generates £180 per month for Jonny - so by discriminating against Jenny, Jonny has cost himself £90 per month. That's as simple as I can put it to show why unfair discrimination is bad for profits.

** Photo courtesy of womenscheapcarinsurance.co.uk

Sometimes 'Life' Should Mean 'Life'

The European Court of Human Rights declares that it is a violation of human rights for criminals to be incarcerated for life with no hope of release. Such a declaration is, in my view, based on two faulty assumptions:

1) That there are no heinous conditions under which an offender should be expected to forgo his or her freedom for life.

2) That there are no criminals dangerous enough to warrant permanent incarceration, and no crimes committed, for which an offender should be locked away for life to keep the public safe from future harm.

Both those assumptions strike me as being false enough to cast serious doubt over the position of The European Court of Human Rights on this one. I'm glad to hear that the Court of Appeal made the right decision today.

* Picture courtesy of walesonline

"Smoking" Gun Evidence of Inconsistency

Parliament is now going to change the law on stealing food. It thinks stealing food is bad, but it thinks stealing some food is worse than stealing other food. From now on if you steal fresh fruit, chocolate or bread you will have committed a crime; but if you steal cereal, tinned food or crisps you will have committed no crime. Sound absurd? It is, but it is no more absurd than the government's latest 'no smoking' policy.

Parliament thinks subjecting children to cigarette smoke is bad, so it has passed a law to make it illegal to smoke in a car when there is a child in the back. But it has made no law against smoking whilst pregnant or smoking 40 a day in the living room surrounded by children.

My intention here is not to comment on whether the 'no smoking in a car with children' law is a good or bad move - it is to say that Parliament's position on this is inconsistent by being incomplete. Either it is a bad thing to harm children with your cigarette smoke or it is not. The State says it is, and most people agree. Therefore if the State is committed to a view that harming children with your cigarette smoke is bad enough to be illegal in the car, it should be consistent in being committed to a view that harming children with your cigarette smoke whilst pregnant or smoking 40 a day in the home should also be illegal.

Some would argue that smoking in the car with the child is more harmful to the child than smoking when pregnant. It seems obvious to me that the opposite is true. Car journeys are occasional and usually brief; whereas being pregnant is a constant nine month process. Who would you rather be: a child in the back seat whose parent sometimes opens the window when they drive, has one cigarette whilst holding it out the window, and blows any exhaled smoke outside, or a foetus inside a mother who smokes 10 cigarettes a day for eight and a half months? Whilst neither would be ideal, I'd choose the former.

Banning smoking in the house sounds like a step too far. Not banning smoking whilst being pregnant sounds like a failure to act. But in declaring that harming children with cigarette smoke is bad enough to warrant a law being passed to law to make it illegal to smoke in a car but not whilst pregnant or chain-smoking around kids in the home, Parliament has created a difficult position for itself, where it is either compelled to pour more fuel on the flames of legislation it considers necessary and extend the ban to pregnancy and home, or it has to adopt an inconsistent position whereby all flames are equal but some are more equal than others.

Why We Shouldn't Make A Habit Of Compensating UK Flood Victims

I heard on the news today that some of the flood victims in Somerset (and other places) are demanding compensation from the government for the damage to their properties. Giving it to them is a bad idea, and here's why. The price of their properties would have been cheaper to buy than equivalent properties not in precarious areas with increased flood possibilities. In buying a property at a reduced rate with a higher chance of flood damage, the buyers are, in effect, taking a risk with the reward of a cheaper property commensurate with that risk.

A government that gives compensation to riskier consumers ends up subsidising risk with your (the taxpayers) money. You might say that frequent dredging solves the problem, but it doesn't because dredging constitutes part of government expenditure, so it is still a case of subsidising risk - it's just a risk subsidy in the form of dredging instead of compensation. When risk is subsidised there is more of it, and when there is more of it there are further increases in it in the future - so instead of adopting more sensible property planning in the future, there will be a continuance of risky, and even riskier, ventures.

Imagine a time, say, one hundred years henceforward when - if the climate change portents are accurate - there is regular property-damaging flooding a few times a year. A situation in which governments kept compensating the victims would exhibit a system in which prior warnings were not heeded, and were, in fact, exacerbated by irresponsibility - an irresponsibility supported by taxpayer hand-outs (if you're interested, two corollary effects would be the raising of taxes for every taxpayer, including those who live in safer areas; and raising the value of property in these flood zones, which would have the effect of limiting people’s freedom to buy cheap, higher-risk property in preference to more expensive, safer property).

Having said all that, I try to be a fair-minded, compassionate man, and I will acknowledge that, so far, flood damage to the properties in question has been relatively infrequent. Thus, if government hand-outs of this kind are rare responses to relatively unforeseen disasters for families, it is a nice thing to help them out. I would just be very wary of any government that wantonly subsidises risks - because spending other people's money on things that bring about less of an incentive to be prudent won't be a good thing if flood-frequency starts to rise.

* Photo courtesy of The Times

Why It *Doesn't* Pay To DIY

At Drexel University, designer Kelly Cobb has tried to prove a point in favour of self-sufficient local trading by making what's called the "100 mile suit" – a suit made solely of materials raised, produced, processed and constructed within 100 miles of Philadelphia. She said:

“I think about cluster economies and how ideally a small community could clothe itself. If you bring the idea of local and sustainable clothing production down to the person-to-person level, the realization that a small community could clothe itself is possible with reasonable expectations and a little ingenuity.”

Kelly Cobb is confused. Her project doesn't prove that local clothing production can be accomplished under reasonable expectations, it proves the opposite – it proves a whopping point against self-sufficient local trade. While extolling the virtues of making the 100 mile suit, Kelly Cobb and her team have forgotten to count the cost of staying local and making it themselves – namely the time, effort, and the cost of denying the volunteers other uses of their skills.

In fact, in the article we get an idea of the extent of the cost with this statement from Cobb:

“Creating the suit was a massive task. Nearly two-dozen artists volunteered 506 hours. “It was a huge undertaking, assembled on half a shoestring,”

Half a shoestring? That must be the world's most expensive half-shoestring. Let’s be ultra-conservative with our estimate by rounding it off to 500 hours, and let us suppose that the average hourly rate of the artists was only £15 per hour. Let us also ignore the additional travel time, fuel costs and other negative externalities associated with those 500 hours – that still works out at a whopping £7500 cost for the suit. For a twentieth of that price she could have bought a decent suit in just a few mintutes in any good clothes store - a suit that was made much more efficiently thanks to global trade, division of labour and specialisation of skills. 

Why The Labour Party Is Like The Mafia

When the mafia used to start up protection rackets they had to strike a good economic balance. Suppose they were going to operate in an area with 50 bars and restaurants - how much should they charge the owners for 'protection'? If they charge too little they don't maximise profits, but if they charge too much they might drive the bar and restaurant owners out of business, which means no more revenue.

Sounds charming doesn't it? Well replace the word 'mafia' with the words 'Labour Party', and the words 'protection racket' with 'tax', and the words 'bars and restaurants' with the word 'electorate', and you've pretty much described how Ed Miliband and Ed Balls' Labour Party works with regard to taxation. While this is slightly different from a protection racket in that the benefits from taxation do extend out to taxpayers more than the benefits from 'protection' extend to bar and restaurant owners, the ethos isn't too dissimilar - the two Eds want to get as much tax out of the electorate as possible without reaching the tipping point of election-losing unpopularity.

If parties are not careful this often amounts to a game of cat and mouse between the establishment and the electorate, where the party in power tries to maximise their revenue without extracting so much from the electorate that there is a stasis or unpopularity. In the ways they can't maximise their revenue without being found out they try to maximise their voting potential. So if you're a party-voter, vote with it primarily in mind that if the party comes to power they are going to spend as much of your money as possible - so best look at the kind of things you think they'll spend it on, and how much in each area, and see if they closely match what you would spend it on.

Ed Balls has been behaving a bit like Don Corleone lately with his belief that the more he can extract for government revenue the better things will be. Someone in the Labour Party needs to put him straight.

It is a mistake though to think of the Laffer curve - which looks at the relationship between tax collected and the rates at which they are collected - as determining the rate of taxation that will raise the maximum revenue for the government. That's not what we should think of as the optimal tax rate - the optimal tax rate is the tax that raises the optimum revenue with the fewest negative spillover effects on the economy. To suggest that a healthy tax rate is one that maximises government revenue is like suggesting that a healthy conscription rate is one that maximises the number of soldiers in the armed forces, or that a healthy diet is one that maximises food intake. The true value of a tax rate or an army quantity or a healthy diet is one that proves most effective when considering all effects, not simply getting the most of something we can.

As things stand with the 45p tax rate, the tax gained from the top 1% is apparently at a record high. They earn 13% of the income but now pay 30% cent of income tax collected.  Even the top 0.1% (stress that's nought point one percent, not one percent) pay a comparably astronomical 14% of the total income tax paid, which is an increase by a factor of 140. Even the staunchest redistributionists can't be too unhappy with that, can they?

What About The Smart-Suited Philanthropists?

Here's an anti-monopoly quote someone posted on Facebook - it's from a well known novel:

“Poverty is not caused by men and women getting married; it's not caused by machinery; it's not caused by "over-production"; it's not caused by drink or laziness; and it's not caused by "over-population". It's caused by Private Monopoly. That is the present system. They have monopolized everything that it is possible to monopolize; they have got the whole earth, the minerals in the earth and the streams that water the earth. The only reason they have not monopolized the daylight and the air is that it is not possible to do it.  Even as you think at present that it's right for so few people to own the Earth, the Minerals and the Water, which are all just as necessary as is the air. In exactly the same spirit as you now say: "It's Their Land," "It's Their Water," "It's Their Coal," "It's Their Iron," so you would say "It's Their Air," "These are their gasometers, and what right have the likes of us to expect them to allow us to breathe for nothing?" And even while he is doing this the air monopolist will be preaching sermons on the Brotherhood of Man; he will be dispensing advice on "Christian Duty" in the Sunday magazines; he will give utterance to numerous more or less moral maxims for the guidance of the young. And meantime, all around, people will be dying for want of some of the air that he will have bottled up in his gasometers".

― Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

The one good way the government regulates an economy is by anti-monopoly regulations (like those in the UK and USA). Monopolies are not economically efficient - they cause underproduction in order for the monopoly power to keep prices up, which is why it used to be good policy to enable increased production for small businesses.

What Robert Tressell didn't account for in 1914 is that when increased capital power creates a top-heavy wealth stratification it also generates improved prosperity for the poorest people in the world too (just about every country in the world is richer and more prosperous now than it was in 1915). That is to say, yes it's true that the rich are getting richer, but so are the poor as a result of it - and the reason this is happening is the progression-explosion that's occurred in the past 200 years, which has seen the diminution of subsistence level living, high infant mortality and widespread poverty being replaced with better health, wealth and prosperity not seen at any time prior to that.

Whenever I meet people who contest the proposition of improvement across the world in recent times, I like to ask them questions like these:

1) Would you rather go about making Sunday lunch for five guests in a 2014 kitchen or in a 1920s kitchen?

2) Would you rather need a heart operation in a 2014 hospital or in a 19th century hospital?

3) Would you rather have to travel urgently from London to Edinburgh on today's transport or on transport in the Victorian times?

4) Would you rather be a father in modern day Mozambique trying to feed his family or a father in 1850s Mozambique trying to feed his family?

5) Would you rather have the holiday options in a 2014 travel agent or the holiday options in a 1940s travel agent?

6) Would you rather have the number of people below the poverty line in 2014 or the number of people below the poverty line in the 1970s?

7) Would you rather be defended by the UK's 2014 armed forces or by the armed forces in the UK in 1813?

8) Would you rather be a woman, or a black person, or a homosexual in the Western world in 2014 or a woman, or a black person, or a homosexual in the Western world in the 1890s?

9) Would you rather have the knowledge of the world available to you in 2014 or the knowledge of the world available to you in 1913?

10) Would you rather have the working week of 2014 or the working week of 1873?

I'll bet that you chose the first option in each of the ten questions - and I could think of dozens more just like them from which you'd choose the contemporary option rather than opting for how things were in the past.

In fact, even if you just focus on some of the wealthiest people in history, I'd wager that any of the Kings or Queens from the York, Tudor, Stuart or even Hanover household would have willingly traded 90% of their wealth and power for 21st century knowledge, medicine, sanitation, roads, cars, worldwide travel, household goods, the internet and access to the knowledge and understanding of the world we have today.

We Can't Always Resist, But Why?

Surprising confession time - I do make a point of watching the reality TV show Made in Chelsea. This surprises a lot of people; upon hearing this they are quick to say something like "I can't believe an intelligent, educated person like you, with so much sexual charisma, watches a programme with such stupid people in it". Ok, I made up the 'sexual charisma' part, but you know what they mean - it is expected that a program about vacuous people (albeit privileged people) would only appeal to equally vacuous people. The main reason I watch Made in Chelsea is that I find it an interesting social experiment - I'm peering into the lives of the kind of people who are not in my social milieu, and that is often an interesting thing to do.

But here's the main point - I'm clearly not alone - these programmes of plentiful vacuity, like Made in Chelsea, Towie, Big Brother, Jeremy Kyle, Celebrity reality shows, and so forth, and magazines covering the lifestyles of half-witted pop icons and pin-ups, are increasingly more popular - and this popularity shows no signs of abating. The Spectator, which isn't exactly known for its vacuity, has the kind of writers who think that the increasing popularity means we as a nation must be getting more vacuous too.

I'm not so sure - maybe the opposite is true; maybe it is because we are all getting smarter, more knowledgeable and more academically gifted that vacuity has become so popular. If you think about consumable products in terms of the usual economic course - an increase of something (oil, gas, timber) causes its price to go down not up, and this may apply to vacuity too - it is commanding a higher price because it is in shorter supply than ever before.

While we're on the subject of TV - the show hitting the headlines in the past week or two has been the controversial Channel 4 programme Benefits Street. It had all the things you'd expect from a show in which filmmakers recorded two years' worth of footage of people at the low end of the educational and socio-economic scale: it had deprivation, despair, criminality, drugs, drink, cigarettes, recidivism, illiteracy and hopelessness; it had people trying to play the system, people who had virtually no chance of getting a job, people who were financially better off not having one; but it also had charity, kindness, sympathy, helpfulness, support, love and friendship, as people empathised with each other's problems, and rallied together in spite of their plights.

It is ironic, of course, that in terms of socio-economic status, there is a night and day difference between the cast of Made in Chelsea and those featured in Benefits Street. If Made in Chelsea, Towie, Big Brother, Jeremy Kyle and Celebrity reality shows are examples of our increased fascination with vacuity by virtue of being a smarter nation on average, then shows like Benefits Street are examples of our increased fascination of a demographic that have had the double misfortune of a) being victims of a system that at present makes some people more rational for choosing the payout of being on benefits over the payout of getting a job; and b) of being caught in a lifestyle trap in which basic education, literacy, social skills, employment prospects and genuine hope seems to most of them like pie in the sky.

Clearly what they need more than anything is help, not demonisation - and by 'help' I don't mean swatting a few mosquitoes, I mean draining the whole swamp of stigmatisation and giving them the love and support to start anew.

* Photo courtesy of www.sofeminine.co.uk