SecondClassCitizens @ClassCitizens

This is so sad: Deferring gratification only makes sense if you have reason to believe that you will live long & healthily enough to enjoy it. The poor man who lives hedonisticly does so not because he has no thought for the future, but precisely because he considers his future.

We can't all just work more hours or get a better job. If we could, it would already be happening. As it's not, it's clear that there isn't scope in the economy. The govt bears responsibility for overseeing the economy. So, what will govt do about poverty? news.sky.com/video/governme…

#Neoliberalism wants everyone to be 'flexible' and 'entrepreneurial'. Unfortunately, this isn't how people and society work. We need commitment, time, place, family. We need to bed in and grow roots, not plough up every year and move on. We need to be nourished *in place*.

#Neoliberalism seeks to mend its faults (inequality, poverty) by telling those who are struggling to solve their struggles thru 'aspiration'. Aspire to get educated, move away, change career, leave your family, break the community. blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpol… tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…

Consider H. Becker's observation that "the definition of a social problem usually contains, implicitly or explicitly, suggestions for how it may be solved". Thus, Tories who want to cut welfare & force people into (bad) work must define benefit receipt as an individual problem.

In 2015, Macnicol complained that "devotees of neoclassical economics operate from what is essentially an a priori position based on eternal principles of human nature, and then the evidence is adjusted to fit those principles." This has fed in to the 'underclass' narrative.

Macnicol (1987) concludes that an "enduring - and rather endearing - feature of the debate is the frequency with which proponents of the concept have called for more research" despite - or perhaps because of - years of research disproving the idea of an inheritable underclass.

Macnicol points out that, far from demonstrating an inability to defer gratification on the part of the 'underclass', it is the middle/upper class politicos who can't delay gratification long enough to bother to read the years of research into the 'underclass' narrative.

John Macnicol wrote in 1987 that "proponents of the underclass concept seem only half aware of its conceptual flaws and completely ignorant of its long and undistinguished pedigree." Yet, decades later, politicians on both sides still base policy on this unfounded trope.

After 20yrs of research, adherents of the idea of genetic heritability of moral deviance and defectiveness were still saying that more research was needed in the late 1930s - because they hadn't managed to demonstrate the existence of such an inheritance.

Ironically, the impact of WW1 military duties and increased employment meant that Lidbetter's investigations into a inheritable defective pauper population "was not so much abandoned as that it fell to pieces". Economic conditions removed pauperism... who'd have thought!?

EJ Lidbetter, in the early 1900s, also pursued the theory that deviant or subnormal behaviour occurs in family generations. He was trying to prove that it was inherited. But after years of study, he still failed to prove the existence of an inheritable underclass.

Coffield's 1981 book, A Cycle of Deprivation, deeply investigates four families thought to represent the kind of deviant behaviour that marks 'troubled families' or 'underclass'. Instead they discovered families who planned for the future, & absence of a distinct deviant culture.

Two things: 1) Why is everything an opportunity to 'crack down' on benefits? Unemployment is up - we must crackdown. Unemployment is down - we must crackdown! 2) did noone in govt read recent research showing that this is the opposite of what employers need?

Harry Yorke @HarryYorke1

3 years ago

Two things: 1) Why is everything an opportunity to 'crack down' on benefits? Unemployment is up - we must crackdown. Unemployment is down - we must crackdown! 2) did noone in govt read recent research showing that this is the opposite of what employers need?

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@ruthpatrick0 rightly notes "the importance of attending not just to structural drivers of inequality, but also to their everyday, lived outcomes – to how being in poverty in a deeply unequal society feels." It's easier to demonise those you don't u'stand. ifs.org.uk/inequality/liv…

Herbert Gans argued that "the idea of the undeserving poor and the stigmas with which people are labelled persist.. because they are useful to the people who are not poor." John Welshman, Underclass: a history of the excluded since 1880

"Writing of the history of the underclass... historian Michael Katz has suggested that... the emergence of the underclass in the late 1970s was a comforting discovery... [it] refocused attention on culture and behaviour, and away from inequality and class structure." J Welshman

It's not surprising that a left-wing person would hate a "low-tax, pro-free market" message, however "principled" the conservative who promotes it. It is the espousal of policies which they believe cause direct immediate and long-term harm to the poor. Of course they hate it.

Nile Gardiner @NileGardiner

3 years ago

It's not surprising that a left-wing person would hate a "low-tax, pro-free market" message, however "principled" the conservative who promotes it. It is the espousal of policies which they believe cause direct immediate and long-term harm to the poor. Of course they hate it.

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Hang on - aren't the police funded by central govt? Didn't @Conservatives cut funding to police and cut police numbers? Didn't they also cut much govt investment in UK and money to LAs, esp Labour LAs, so there is both more poverty & problems, and less resources to respond with?

Conservatives @Conservatives

3 years ago

Hang on - aren't the police funded by central govt? Didn't @Conservatives cut funding to police and cut police numbers? Didn't they also cut much govt investment in UK and money to LAs, esp Labour LAs, so there is both more poverty & problems, and less resources to respond with?

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It's possibly not very good for me to watch #SAS #WhoDaresWins. It reminds me who I used to be, and how I used to push myself, and the adulation that brought. #ELCI Chronic Illness is the total opposite. But it's far too easy to forget that, & so hard to always keep within limits