News Stories & Politics Flashcards
The 2024 Budget’s Effect on Farmers
The complaints from farmers have been louder. They are cross about many things, including rapid cuts to their subsidies. Worst, they say, are changes in inheritance tax. Since the 1990s farm property has been almost completely immune. In future, assets over £1m ($1.3m) will be taxed at 20%.
A government that chooses to tax inherited wealth has no good reason to exempt farms. Doing so creates a loophole that encourages all sorts of people to buy agricultural land, pushing up the price (see chart 2). Savills, an estate agent, estimates that farmers account for just 43% of buyers, down from 66% at the turn of the century. Steve Meredith, a tax adviser with many rural clients, says that “big boys from the City” can easily outbid growers.
According to the agriculture department, 38% of farmers are aged at least 65. They would probably be loth to hand over to the next generation in any event, since farming is an identity as much as it is a job. But the inheritance-tax breaks and the tax treatment of capital gains encourage them to keep farming as long as they can. That is undesirable. Farming is becoming more complicated, with subsidies giving way to finicky environmental schemes, so new blood would be good.
In their calmer moments, farmers acknowledge the perverse consequences of the existing rules. They resent the suddenness of the reforms, though, and think that the government misunderstands its own tax system. The Treasury points out, soothingly, that only around a quarter of estates claim Agricultural Property Relief on more than £1m of assets. But Business Property Relief, which is also subject to the £1m cap, is more important to many farmers, especially those who have branched out into campsites, weddings and the like.
And the changes will affect ordinary land-owning farmers. The agriculture department estimates that almost half of English farms have a net worth of at least £1.5m. Julie Butler, an expert on agricultural taxation, says that the great landed estates are skilled at passing on property. They tend to do it early, and make use of trusts. A 70-year-old with a few hundred acres is more likely to be caught out.
Optimistically, the new rules will encourage farmers to hand property to their spouses and children sooner, prod the City boys to put their money somewhere more useful and drive down the price of farmland. Pessimistically, they could discourage farmers from investing, for instance in new equipment. They might fear that improvements would push the value of their land over the threshold, forcing their heirs to sell parts of it. Ms Bassett has heard mutterings to that effect already.
Most likely, complaints from both businesses and farmers will fall on deaf ears. Labour’s majority runs through younger, urban voters who care most about getting better public services. But if the budget revealed that the government wants to make Britain more European, the prime minister may also need to be prepared for deposits of manure outside Downing Street.
The 2024 Budget’s Effects on Businesses
on November 19th farmers will gather in Westminster for a rally and a “mass lobby”, to protest against the Labour government’s first budget. A “good show” is promised.That is only one way in which the budget threatens to make Britain more European: also rising tax as a share of GDP, rising minus wage, a European style big state.
£26 Billion annual increase to employers National insurance contributions, in the short term deterring hiring (smaller businesses mays top altogether, larger ones may slow wage growth or give lower salaries to new hire because people object to wage cuts ) = the effects will be pronounced at the bottom end of the Labour market. Th
The Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think-tank, reckons the change will raise labour costs by nearly 5% for the lowest-paid workers. Pulling up the minimum wage to two-thirds of median earnings compounds the hit.
A generous Labour-whisperer might be able to discern a strategy here. Perhaps by making low-wage employment costlier, the government wants to push companies to train up existing workers and automate more. But even sympathetic policy wonks admit there are better ways to achieve that, like explicit tax breaks for investment. The core problem is that Labour chose to rule out better ways of raising the money needed for public services in order to make winning the election easier.
The budget also worsened some of the distortions in the tax code that make firms and workers less productive. By only raising taxes on employers, Labour has further tilted the balance in favour of self-employment. The Resolution Foundation, a think-tank, calculates that someone earning £50,000 will now pay £15,000 in tax if they work for a company, whereas a sole trader or owner-manager will only pay around £10,000 (see chart 1). One consequence is that more firms will restructure as partnerships.
The bigger problem is that workers will be nudged away from the helpful economies of scale that companies offer, like centralised facilities, finance, and human resources operations.The rise in employers’ national insurance penalises large firms more than small ones, since Labour also expanded the tax-free allowance each employer gets before they start paying. That will reduce the incentives for small businesses to grow, which again cuts against the aim of boosting productivity.
Global Britain: The Responsibility to Protect and Humanitarian Intervention
House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee - (10th September 2018)
Sex Work
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/10/30/how-to-bring-sex-work-out-of-the-shadows
As of December 2024: Sex workers in Belgium will now be entitled to employment contracts and social benefits. A law that takes effect on December 1st, the first of its kind in the world, regulates the profession’s working hours and wages. Sex workers will also be eligible for paid maternity leave, sick days, health insurance and pensions. Belgium decriminalised sex work in 2022.
Many rich countries have decriminalised the buying and selling of sex, but prostitution remains illegals across America. There are two broad approaches: allowing the selling of sex but retaining penalties for buying it, in the hope this will lower demand (this is known as the Nordic model, after a law passed in Sweden in 1999); and decriminalising both sides of the transaction, in the hope that it will result in better working conditions.
ARGUMENTS FOR:
This reflects a growing belief that prosecuting prostitutes is cruel and counterproductive. Criminal records can make it hard to find housing and alternative employment. The mere threat of them can prevent some from seeking health care.
Proponents of full decriminalisation argue that bringing sex work into the light makes it easier for prostitutes to get access to health services and report violence to the police. They often cite the example of New Zealand, which fully decriminalised in 2003. Four years later a study found that most prostitutes still did not report violence, but a majority said police attitudes towards them had improved.
ARGUMENTS AGAINST:
Drug addiction and homelessness often lead people into sex work and keep them in it. Many prostitutes have sold sex since they were minors; other forms of employment are not connected with abuse in this way. Nor are they typically connected with trafficking.
The New Zealand study found that the number of sex workers there had not increased after decriminalisation. But an analysis of data from 150 countries in 2013 found that legalising prostitution led to its expansion and increased trafficking as breaking the law acts as a deterrent to some would-be buyers, so full decriminalisation boosts demand.
Securinomics
A neologism coined by Rachel Reeves, summing uo her plan to introduce a variant of President Joe Biden’s industrial policy to Britain, marking a clean break with the embrace of globalisation and market liberalisation that characterised New Labour. In May 2023 she commented that “Trade liberalisation had been gamed by China”. Starmer’s Givernmnet seeks greater self-sufficient in energy through a state-driven programme of decarbonisation.
Nov 14th: the chancellor addressed Trump, declaring Britain would defend free and open trade and wanted to deepen its economic relationship with America. Ms Reeves said that a reliance on heavily subsidised Chinese cars would be short-termist and naive; a repeat of the West’s addiction to cheap Russian gas. In office it has been more balanced. So far Britain has not mirrored American and European tariffs on Chinese carmakers. On November 18th Sir Keir became the first British prime minister to meet Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, since 2018.
“Britain was always too exposed to global trade, too reliant on services and in too weak a fiscal position to recreate Mr Biden’s plan to create industrial jobs by splashing cash. “
“Labour now places a bigger emphasis on housebuilding and the creation of a new generation of asset-owners who can pass wealth onto their children. You can call that “securonomics” if you like. But it resembles Margaret Thatcher’s idea of a property-owning democracy as much as it does the thinking of Mr Biden.”
Which countries have the most-educated politicians?
https://www.economist.com/interactive/graphic-detail/2024/11/14/which-countries-have-the-most-educated-politicians
the age of elected lawmakers (the global average is now 51)
the share of women (still just 27%)
on average, 78% of lawmakers had at least an undergraduate degree, and that 40% had postgraduate ones. Those numbers are far above the average for all adults (which in rich countries is currently 35% and 15%, respectively).
Ukraine had the highest proportion of legislators with postgraduate credentials; almost a quarter had PhDs when the data were collected. Academic titles have long been helpful in Ukraine’s politics: all of its presidents since independence in 1991, except Volodymyr Zelensky, have claimed to hold doctorate degrees.
In comparison, Italy, Norway and Britain had high shares of lawmakers with no more than a secondary-school education. Sir Lindsay Hoyle, for example, became speaker of Britain’s House of Commons without going to university.
there is little empirical evidence to support that the more education the politicians, the better they do their job: across the world, the most highly-educated politicians lose elections at about the same rate as candidates who have less formal education. And yet, people without degrees are finding it increasingly difficult to get their names onto ballot sheets. National legislatures, at least in regards to education, have become less like the populations that they are supposed to represent.
That could have unfortunate consequences. The type of people who acquire uncommonly expensive educations tend to have different priorities from the man on the street. Citizens become less likely to vote if they do not see people like themselves on ballot papers—and they are a bit more inclined to listen to populists who insist their democracies are rigged. On average parliaments around the world are gradually becoming younger, and a bit more female. But they are also becoming more elite.
Attitudes in Ukraine
- Most Ukrainians now want an end to the war
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2024/11/20/most-ukrainians-now-want-an-end-to-the-war
Surveys published on November 19th and 20th by Gallup, a pollster, show that 52% of Ukrainians now support negotiating an end to the war as soon as possible, a sharp rise from just 27% a year ago. The share of those determined to fight “until victory” has dropped from 63% in 2023 to 38%. Even Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, has shifted tone: he recently expressed hope for a diplomatic resolution next year. That reflects a change in rhetoric since the re-election of Donald Trump in America.
What explains this fatigue? The immense human and economic toll of the war no doubt weighs heavily on Ukrainians. But growing disillusionment with the West, and what support Ukraine can expect, might also play a role.
American Election Statistics
Forty-seven counties flipped from Democrat to Republican. Mr Trump had increased his vote share in 89% of counties compared with 2020.
Ms Harris lagged behind Mr Biden’s performance in suburban counties across the country, which are important battlegrounds for both parties. That led to her winning far more narrowly than was expected in states such as Virginia, and losing in others, such as Pennsylvania.
exit polls show that Ms Harris’s margin across the country with Hispanic voters was just six points; in 2020 the same polls showed that Mr Biden carried it by 33 points.
This shift is especially stark among men, who went from supporting Mr Biden by 23 points in 2020, to favouring Mr Trump by 12 points
Black voters mostly stuck with the Democrats - 87%. In the end Ms Harris did better than Mr Biden with black women and college-educated voters, but she fell behind on black men and rural voters
The biggest swings among young voters came from Hispanics, whose growing fondness for Mr Trump spanned age groups. In fact, young white people aged 18 to 29 moved closer to the Democrats regardless of their education level. Surprisingly, Mr Trump closed the gap on his 2020 showing with young women—albeit marginally—by almost as much as he did with young men (but women were still more likely to vote for Ms Harris BUT Mr Trump’s appeal grew among 18- to 44-year-old women, rural and not college educated women ). His courting of low-propensity voters did not seem to have much effect.
the first Republican to win the popular vote since George W. Bush in 2004.
The Big Mac Index
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2024/10/18/an-alternative-use-for-the-economists-big-mac-index
The famous burger is a good test of currency valuations because of its global uniformity and ubiquity. The same properties make it a useful way of comparing international salaries.
The more conventional way of comparing incomes is to convert wages in different countries into a common currency. But that is misleading because exchange rates are volatile. Moreover, one American dollar goes a lot farther in, say, the Philippines than it does in America itself. The Big Mac helps to solve this problem as a ready-made illustration of purchasing power: it represents a bundle of goods (or, rather, a bun of goods) that is identical everywhere, and so it serves as a yardstick of the real cost of things from country to country.
The average American worker takes home the equivalent of 14,000 Big Macs in wages for a year of full-time work. - A standard objection to any measure of higher incomes in America is that its workers generally get less time off - with this adjustment, America is third behind the Danes
our measure misses how income taxes (which can surpass 50% in Denmark) eat into their burger budgets. Much else of what goes into the cost of living, from housing to transportation, is also barely reflected in the price of burgers. In a developing country like Mexico, where housing is relatively cheap and American fast-food indulgences relatively expensive, a burger-based wage calculation understates how much stuff an average worker can actually afford
Best ways to measure standard of living
- The world’s richest countries in 2024
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2024/07/04/the-worlds-richest-countries-in-2024
Measures such as GDP are affected by population size (more people generally mean more output). Dollar income per person does not account for differences in prices between countries. Nor does it account for productivity (overall output per hour worked).
The Economist ranks countries by three measures: dollar income per person, income adjusted for local prices (known as purchasing-power parity, or PPP) and income per hour worked.
LOOKING AT THEIR GRAPHS: Take America first. Its GDP has been the largest at market exchange rates for over a century. But by income per person it falls to sixth, behind Luxembourg (first) and Switzerland (second). Adjusting for America’s higher prices pushes it down to ninth; accounting for its long workdays and limited holidays, to tenth. The results for China—the world’s second-largest economy in nominal terms—are even starker: it falls to 69th by GDP per person, 75th at local prices and 97th after accounting for hours worked. Singapore and Brunei exhibit some of the biggest differences between each measure
GDP per person in Burundi is just $200 a year—the lowest of any country in the ranking. It remains in last place even after adjusting for its cheap prices and below-average working hours (almost half its people are under the age of 14). Poorer countries tend to have large informal economies, however, which makes their total output and working hours harder to gauge.
factors such as savings rates, salaries earned abroad and personal assets are also missing from our data, and could skew personal-income results
Some countries have odd GDP data: like Ireland. Ireland’s generous corporate-tax defame has made it a hub for multinational tech and pharmaceutical companies, so, as much of this money is funnelled out, past economists relied on GNI (total income received by a country’s residents, based on profits before depreciation is subtracted (which is problematic when considering planes as aircraft-leasing firms earn a hefty income but are tempered by annual depreciation of planes THUS this huge capital stock inflates the measure)
Should euthanasia be allowed for those with mental illnesses?
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2024/09/16/should-euthanasia-be-allowed-for-those-with-mental-illnesses
Assisted suicide is still a relatively new and rare practice. Thirty years ago it was illegal everywhere except Switzerland. Now at least a dozen countries allow some patients to self-administer lethal drugs (known as physician-assisted dying) or to receive them from a doctor (voluntary euthanasia).
Legislation is evolving worldwide. In some countries the practice is limited to terminally ill people who want to have control over the manner and timing of their deaths. Elsewhere, it extends to those suffering from debilitating, but not life-threatening conditions. In countries including the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland, these can include severe mental-health problems.
Psychiatric patients still represent a very small proportion of assisted suicides globally. The opposite is true for other forms of suicide, most cases of which involve people with severe mental illness, not physical suffering.
In the Netherlands and Belgium, the right to die has been extended to minors.
What did the Tories do wrong?
Against the grain of their ideology they raised taxes to 36% of GDP, their highest level since the second world war.
David Cameron and George Osborne, then chancellor of the exchequer, acknowledged in 2015 that productivity is a “long-standing weakness in the British economy”. Over the past 14 years the problem got worse. Productivity growth, measured by GDP per hour worked, rose by an average of 2% a year between 1980 and 2010. Since then the rate has slowed to just 0.5% - and to be fair isn’t just limited to England, BUTone of the worst productivity growth rates among G7 countries in recent years. Trade barriers created by Britain’s exit from the EU have not helped matters. Stagnant productivity holds down living standards, and the growth of revenue that the government could use to improve public services.
During their years in power spending on health care increased from 27% of all departmental spending to 29%.
Net migration jumped from 250,000 in 2016 to 760,000 in 2022, when the Tory party relaxed some restrictions on migration to deal with labour shortages created by the effects of Brexit and the pandemic. The outbreak of war in Ukraine and China’s clampdown on Hong Kong pushed arrivals in Britain higher still.
Education reforms in 2012 gave all schools the ability to become “academies”, a status that frees them from local-government control. Around 80% of secondary schools now operate in this way = improved mathematics
Britain’s domestic greenhouse-gas emissions have fallen by 30% over the past 14 years. Its overall footprint (which includes the effect of trade) has decreased by a less impressive 12%.
Where is the “motherhood penalty” greatest?
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2024/03/07/where-is-the-motherhood-penalty-greatest
Across the world 95% of men between the ages of 25 and 54 are employed, but just 52% of women are. In the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, the shares are 91% for men and only 75% for women.
One study found that up to 80% of the difference between male and female labour-force participation may be explained by women quitting work (temporarily or permanently) after the birth of their first child. In poorer countries motherhood explains only about 10% of the gap, because most women leave the workforce after marriage.
The motherhood penalty tends to be higher in big cities than in rural areas. Part of this may be explained by differences between jobs. Capital cities and financial hubs have more “greedy jobs”, such as those in law, accountancy and finance, that demand long and unpredictable hours.
America’s university graduates live much longer than non-graduates
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/10/02/americas-university-graduates-live-much-longer-than-non-graduates
In 2021, at age 25, Americans who do not have a four-year college degree (about two-thirds of the adult population) were expected to live on average about ten years less than those who do. In 1992 the gap was a third of that ( . AMERICA’s LIFE-EXPECTANCY IS MUCH LOWER: much higher rates of deaths by drug overdose, (diabetes, heart disease,) shooting or car accident also have an outsize effect, in particular because they disproportionately affect the young.
Dr Paola Romero on the different theories of how to reconcile individual freedom with obligations to the political state
KANT IN MORAL VS POLITICAL OBLIGATIONS
KANT sees this an internal problem (his practical philosophy is divided into two parts). Moral philosophy is it do with internal freedom as it is self- legislation. Political philosophy is to do with external freedom: public legislation by means of the general will.
- Why do I keep promises? Because I make myself subject to the moral law that says “keep your promises”
- The state has the power to coerce you to restrict your freedom
- Why do I restrict myself from shop lifting? Because I make myself subject to the coercive power of the state that says ‘don’t shop lift, if you do, you get punished”
There are evident clashes here: my conscience may tell me to rebel against arbitrary authority, but my political obligation tells me I should respect the de facto power. How do we resolve this? What if a law is unjust?
The Kantian notion of moral autonomy can have the effect of delegitimising all political and social institutions that are not the product if our own free will. A radical version of this can lead to the rejection of oppressive and authorities institutional arrangements that do not seem to express man’s essential humanity and dignity He supports the idea that “I am the source of the law”.
Dr Paola Romero on Kant and why the State is Necessary
Why is the state necessary? Why is public coercion necessary, when we could possibly live by morality alone?
- Political realist may argue the fact of power: power is unavoidable, and someone will always wish to gain and assert it
- Following the pessimistic logic, one could argue human nature means the state is necessary - we are destined towards violence / selfishness / etc…
- The fair play theory, the cooperation theory - these are instrumental approaches to the state
- It is instrumentally useful to restrict the use of our freedom and get the benefit of that corporation
Kant’s normative answer to these questions (i.e. how we ought to be): the fact that we are FREE beings requires COERCION in order to establish the conditions that make the exercise of that freedom possible
THUS we have a TENSION: we need to limit freedom to have freedom and to coexist.
“The coercive power of an omnilateral will.”
Because we are free agents, we would wrong each other by resisting to live under coercive laws - you are not obligated to the state but to other people! For Kant, thus the state is a moral necessity because we would be wronging others by living outside of the civil condition
- Morality is not a pre-condition of extenders freedom - KANT SEPARATES politics & morality
- Rousseau - first make sure they are moral beings THEN
- Politicak life is common is not the result of our moral intentions
- Hobbes “ifabio nterno “
- Seperation between political and personal sphere
- Kantian politics should sterne as a means to moral progress and to moral ends
- Teleological - development towards moral goal - Aristotle terros - end aim is morality - moral progress - we will get to a perfect moral end but on the way not everyone needs moral motivations, just acting in line with law?
- Our moral ends takes priority
- Post-kantians take up this logic - Hegel, Fichte, Marx - approaching an end = moral liberation
- Kantian politics & morality is similar in that they are marked by the “sharing of ends”
- The civil condition / the state back es the enabling condition so that makes, ends can be realised even in the absence if “motiva moralia”
DofR 6:231 - Universal Principle of Right - like the categorical imperative
The Kantian State
What is a moral obligation?
Moral philosophers attempt to understand and distill the essence of right and wrong, good and evil, and justice and injustice, into a coherent system
Dr Paola Romero on Kant & the State
Nozick’s question: “the fundamental question of political philosophy, one that precedes questions about how the state should be organised, is whether there should be any state at all?”
Why do we obey the law? Because rational agents have a duty to support the collective order that laws represent, provided they are just. It is also instrumentally beneficial, both in the long term and short term (fear of punishment ).
Is the state a moral necessity? Yes, because it ensures a rightful condition in which freedom, equality, and justice are protected.
Would we be doing a wrong by living outside of the state?
Why do we obey authority? Do you do so voluntarily?
Do you think your obligation to authority depends on authority being legitimate? Kant’s views emphasize the rational and moral necessity of political institutions while recognizing that their legitimacy depends on adherence to universal moral principles.
Moral vs Political obligations: are political obligations grounded in your moral obligations or not?
Kant’s political philosophy begins with the idea that we are rational, interdependent and forward-looking agents of choice
Joe Biden abused a medieval power to pardon his son
WHEN SETTING up the checks and balances in the American constitution, the document’s authors knew they wanted the judiciary to be independent of the legislative and the executive branches. But who, then, would check the judges? One answer was that the president would be able to pardon criminals. This awesome power—to override a decision taken by the courts—should be used rarely, because it is at odds with democracy and judicial independence. If it seems a bit medieval to let one man dispense (and dispense with) justice in this way, that is because it is.
In pardoning his son Hunter, Joe Biden has abused it. The court has also said that presidential pardons can be used to further “the public welfare”. This one harms it.
Jimmy Carter pardoned his brother, Bill Clinton his half-brother, Donald Trump his daughter’s father-in-law
The pardon thereby confirms the cynicism many Americans feel about their politicians and institutions. Mr Biden applies one set of rules to himself and his family members, and another to the people he serves. At least Mr Trump makes no secret of what he is.
One of the many disappointments of Mr Biden is that he talked as if Mr Trump was a threat to the republic, yet never acted as if he believed it. He stayed in the race when his own party’s voters were worried he was too old to run; he presided over a party machinery that interfered in favour of Republican election-deniers in the 2022 mid-terms, because it thought they would lose; he stepped down without giving his party time to find its strongest candidate. And he warned about Mr Trump abusing the machinery of justice, then pardoned his son for convictions on tax and gun charges.
