The report, An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in Britain, says the gap between rich and poor is greater than at any time since World War II, despite 13 years of Labour rule and the billions which Labour has poured into initiatives to try to close the chasm.
By some measures it's harder for a child born into poverty today to rise up the social ladder than at any time since the 1950s.
The fact that the inequalities opened up in the 1980s under Friedmanite Margaret Thatcher, and were held back, if not significantly narrowed, by Labour policies, is little consolation...
The parallels with New Zealand are striking.
But are they?
In fact the growth in income inequality in Great Britain is much lower than in NZ as shown here. The growth in income inequality in GB is half of the OECD average.
It would be much more accurate to claim the parallels between NZ and Finland are "striking" when measuring income inequality growth.
Misa has written about Finland before;
There are no private schools in Finland and education is free all the way through university. But Finnish 15-year-olds top the OECD in educational achievement, as measured by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)...
We could learn a lot from Finland, not just in the way it treats its teachers but in the way it reformed its education system from the late 1960s.
Could we replicate their success? Naysayers often point to the fact that Finland's population is more homogenous than ours, but Massey High's principal, Bruce Ritchie, who visited Finland on a study tour, points out that it was a more monocultural society 40 years ago, when its education system had similar problems to ours.
Bugger. For someone who strongly believes public education will solve the problem of inequality, that throws a bit of a spanner in the works.
I am sympathetic to her desire to see the incomes of the 'poor' rise. But as I wrote on Friday, that cannot be achieved through taxation and redistribution.
4 comments:
Theb article misses. I would consider it the rantings of a worthless leftie.
Misa lost the plo years ago.
PISA is a con. (TIMSS/PIRLS are the only international studies which are above contempt.) All PISA compares is the deceitfulness of teachers. Interesting that teacher deceit and income inequality growth do seem be show some correlation.
P.S. Public Education will never be a solution to anything. (Unless the problem is to acheive statist domination with almost everyone persuaded to believe that what really matters is whether the blue prince and his mates or the red prince and his mates get the larger baubles.)
Dave Christian
By some measures it's harder for a child born into poverty today to rise up the social ladder than at any time since the 1950s.
This is excellent news: the damage of the "egalitarian" war years and then the 60s are finally being overcome.
In fact the growth in income inequality in Great Britain is much lower than in NZ as shown here.
Again excellent.
I am sympathetic to her desire to see the incomes of the 'poor' rise.
Why on earth! NZ is already 1/3 less productive than Aussie, and now you just want to make it worse. I want to see wages and benefits and everything for the unproductive, low incomes, fall, very far, very hard, and very fast. Large increases in suicide, infant mortality, and crime would be good indicators this policy is succeeding
You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.
You can't reform an economy without throwing the unproductive onto the scrap-heap --- literally, to scratch a living from the town dumps, some of time!
The poor are not the Governments problem. Why have we abdicated this responsibility to them? How could we let this happen? How much more evidence is required to show that the Government are NOT the solution to poverty?
Just to get personal, there is something about that Misa woman's smile that leaves me feeling uncomfortable.
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