tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post5064253602964773009..comments2024-03-28T12:23:39.665+00:00Comments on Coppola Comment: A lack of compassionFrances Coppolahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09399390283774592713noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-41302570338912505382019-02-27T18:41:53.885+00:002019-02-27T18:41:53.885+00:00Well that's really not good Frances when bill ...Well that's really not good Frances when bill 40 and institutional economist are using pseudonyms. Will John Smyth, not my real name, do? Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-31131577350225010452019-02-27T14:28:31.416+00:002019-02-27T14:28:31.416+00:00Anonymous, I have deleted all the comments signed ...Anonymous, I have deleted all the comments signed "Sine Language", since this is not a name. Please respect my request to identify yourself. Frances Coppolahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09399390283774592713noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-69132601980541389932019-02-26T17:22:05.633+00:002019-02-26T17:22:05.633+00:00Anonymous,
1). Please sign your post with your na...Anonymous,<br /><br />1). Please sign your post with your name. I do not like talking to an anonymous account, <br /><br />2) it is very evident that you are trying to build a case against immigration by misrepresenting my work. Indeed you have just done it again. Nowhere have I equated cheap labour with immigrants. <br /><br />3) Family carers are working full-time as carers, therefore the correct equivalence is not with benefits but with earned income. The National Living Wage is the minimum amount that the government says those who are working need to earn in order to live. Family carers earn less than half that. <br /><br />It's a bit rich you complaining about assumptions when you make so many yourself. <br />Frances Coppolahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09399390283774592713noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-16947881897134932862019-02-26T15:25:12.283+00:002019-02-26T15:25:12.283+00:00I found a thing with stats about the caseload, I w...I found a thing with stats about the caseload, I will post sth about it when I get home.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-42504473000159521502019-02-26T13:37:15.025+00:002019-02-26T13:37:15.025+00:00As for the amount the govt says ppl can live on, t...As for the amount the govt says ppl can live on, the applicable amount in benefit calculations is literally described in award letters as "the amount the government says you need to live on"! IS claimants are receiving that amount. You began the post with "how will they live?" switched to "CA is lower than JSA" and have ended up at "it's lower than the minimum wage". You also mentioned full-time carers with dependent kids, and of course on IS or UC the applicable amount will be increased accordingly for each dependent child.<br /><br />This is not to say carers on benefits have a good income, and by all means propose increasing it if you like, but that they can and do "live" today! And you apparently thought they were entitled to far less benefit (or benefit plus wages) than they in fact are. I don't think either Fraser or you should be making such big assumptions without looking it up and thinking it through properly.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-29532042946687627892019-02-26T13:27:37.730+00:002019-02-26T13:27:37.730+00:00Frances, I was not trying to build a case against ...Frances, I was not trying to build a case against immigration there at all, and I resent your jumping to that conclusion. The confusion was caused by your own use of the phrase "cheap labour" to describe immigrants. Especially when you follow that by discussing what higher wages would mean.<br /><br />Depressed growth through hysteresis for those countries would be a side-effect of emigration, but lower growth does mean lower future wages there does it not? We want economic growth so we can have higher real wages.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-17871441215755468902019-02-26T08:37:36.468+00:002019-02-26T08:37:36.468+00:00Re carer's allowance. Family carers are workin...Re carer's allowance. Family carers are working full-time and thus often not able to take on other work. The maximum income a full-time family carer can have is £120 per week. The national living wage is currently £7.83 per hour, rising to £8.21 in April. A full-time job (35 hours) at the national living wage thus pays £274.05 per week. Carers thus earn less than half the amount the Government says is enough to live on. Frances Coppolahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09399390283774592713noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-35298515311466802162019-02-26T08:29:23.017+00:002019-02-26T08:29:23.017+00:00Anonymous, you have read all sorts of things into...Anonymous, you have read all sorts of things into my previous blogposts that are not there. <br /><br />Firstly, the quotation does not anywhere say that low wages are due to immigration. The causes of low wages include all of the following:<br />- the ability of companies to offshore production to lower-wage countries (see Dyson)<br />- systematic dismantling of organised labour and weakening of bargaining power<br />- systematic reduction of employment protections and workers' rights<br />- the growth of shadow employment ("gig economy") and self-employment<br />- minimum wage treated as the wage ceiling for unskilled workers in the care and hospitality sectors, eliminating pay progression and differentials<br />- the entry of women to the workforce (jobs predominantly done by women tend to be lower paid)<br />- the entry of sick and disabled people to the workforce (companies can pay them less by claiming they are less productive)<br />- high availability of cheap unskilled labour in some sectors (there is some evidence that immigration depresses wages in industries such as fruit picking, but not across the board).<br /><br />Secondly, as far as countries suffering emigration are concerned, those who remain tend to be the unskilled, so have lower wages anyway. The remaining skilled would if anything be able to command higher wages than without migration, because there would be so few of them. The real problem is the hysteresis effect that depresses growth in those countries. This is what concerns me, not migration per se. I think people should have the right to leave their country in search of a better life if that is what they want to do. <br /><br />Seems to me you want to build a specific case against immigration. But I do not. Please do not misrepresent my work to promote your own agenda. Frances Coppolahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09399390283774592713noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-54024786288692553052019-02-26T02:25:19.847+00:002019-02-26T02:25:19.847+00:00I've just realised a working-age CA claimant c...I've just realised a working-age CA claimant could usually get Income Support (as then was) as they would meet the IS criteria (low or nonexistent savings or other income), that means at the end of the day their total income would be brought up to £109 a week, plus whatever HB they could get. Unsure how to find the figure they would get under UC into which it's not subsumed, but you get the idea.<br /><br />That's quite some difference, and means they would be living on quite a lot more than a JSA claimant. https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/income-supportAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-27232755366467136592019-02-26T01:37:33.226+00:002019-02-26T01:37:33.226+00:00It is certainly enough to live on when so many car...It is certainly enough to live on when so many carers are in fact living on it! The best part of a million. That's what the phrase means. And they have little ability to top it up using work since to get CA they have to be caring 35 hrs a week, for those with it as their sole income it's obviously enough to live on.<br /><br />On immigration, then I take it here you were considering something hypothetical in the oldsters' mental model? "many people would welcome higher wages. But the other side of higher wages is higher prices. We have become accustomed to cheap food, cheap consumer goods, .... when the middle-aged and old can no longer afford to replace their cars every three years, because manufacturers have weaned themselves off their diet of cheap labour; when they have to cut down on their meals out because pubs and restaurants have put up prices in response to the higher wages demanded by their British staff; .... when the cost of Granny's care home shoots through the roof..."<br /><br />The labour is *not* actually cheap because of immigration?<br /><br />You also seem to agree with Krugman's model of agricultural periphery to industrial core, applied more broadly to migration between low and high wage countries. If you believe this makes the fortunes of rich and poor countries diverge, then if it ends up holding back economic growth in the poor countries, does it not mean wages in *those* countries will end up lower than they would otherwise be, even if rich countries are unaffected?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-7248564937912468812019-02-25T12:53:32.930+00:002019-02-25T12:53:32.930+00:00Carers' allowance is less than JSA. It is not ...Carers' allowance is less than JSA. It is not enough to live on. <br /><br />I have never said that I think mass immigration is bad for wages. There is substantial evidence that it makes little difference. Frances Coppolahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09399390283774592713noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-18950408684153832432019-02-25T10:44:43.540+00:002019-02-25T10:44:43.540+00:00While nursing homes would be better, I'm very ...While nursing homes would be better, I'm very surprised at the question "How will they live"? If they care fulltime then they can claim Carer's Allowance of course. I'm surprised you seem not to have heard of it considering how much you've written about the welfare state and if you've talked to hundreds on Twitter about this problem.<br /><br />As for immigration, I don't see why overall reducing it after Brexit (if it happens) is incompatible: workers in social care could be given the right to work here if we choose to write the law that way. But since I think elderly care should be paid for by taxes, and you've written in another post that you think mass immigration is bad for wages, I don't see why one group of health/social care workers should be underpaid.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-34707727206024082582019-02-24T23:12:21.130+00:002019-02-24T23:12:21.130+00:00Because Brexit is a conduit for him to express the...Because Brexit is a conduit for him to express the rage at the changing social fabric of a country that has become more progressive. For those he most express contempt "the working class" aka those below him, he chimes perfectly with the parvenu types who think of themselves as the "elites". Jonathan Portes got it right- know your placeinstitional economisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00507358255169077323noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-13066350302699558052019-02-24T22:51:43.631+00:002019-02-24T22:51:43.631+00:00Why bring back the unequal, misogynistic society o...Why bring back the unequal, misogynistic society of the past?<br /><br />I am not sure that its really a thing of the past, especially for low income women. I am not sure that their circumstances has changed much at all in the past 100 yearsinstitional economisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00507358255169077323noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-10794003923621561272019-02-24T21:33:35.159+00:002019-02-24T21:33:35.159+00:00This comment has been removed by the author.Jenny Woolfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16881781466502273314noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-8815694490064187042019-02-24T15:36:00.122+00:002019-02-24T15:36:00.122+00:00It isn't just giving up work that's the is...It isn't just giving up work that's the issue, it also means the carer will be unable to save for their old old age and who is going to do the vacated job the carer has left? And just why he tied this problem to Brexit in any way shape or form is beyond me. Thanks for writing this as it was intensely personal for you. bill40https://www.blogger.com/profile/07133785926315743691noreply@blogger.com