FALSE CORRELATIONS

FALSE CORRELATIONS

26 Jan 2018

POVERTY AND INEQUALITY Listening to Radio 4’s Today (aka NHS Daily) I heard a professional lobbyist from Oxfam explaining that poverty and inequality are inextricably linked. Most of us are against poverty and inequality and, if we suffer from neither, probably feel slightly guilty about both. The counter argument, which is fairly obvious, is that economic growth is the only practical way to relieve poverty; that economic growth is best served by liberal democracy or free market capitalism, (if you think that term is more honest); and that inequality is always promoted by such growth. Reading its latest polemic about the “inequality crisis” I learn that Oxfam broadly agrees with the argument that economic growth is the answer to poverty. Between 1990 and 2010, the number of people living in extreme poverty (i.e. on less than $1.90 a day) halved, and has continued to decline since then. This tremendous achievement is something of which the world should be proud.   Reward work not wealth: Oxfam January 2018 It goes on to say that we would have done even better if we had eradicated inequality. This is the big contentious and unknowable point and is therefore the object of lobbying rather than reasoned argument. Oxfam’s lobbying might be more convincing coming from an organisation that rewards its executives less lavishly. The president of its US operation was paid a package of $504,000 last year; its CFO $258,000. Oxfam UK’s eight directors averaged £113,000 having received an inflation beating 3.7% rise. What first struck me about the Today item was that I heard the Oxfam lobbyist say that “we (Oxfam) know more than anybody else the power of enterprise to help overcome poverty” – this is bragging worthy of Donald Trump and is perhaps evidence of how his influence is becoming pervasive, even among those who presumably despise him. On reflection I was more taken with the casual way that poverty and inequality were conflated. Dodgy correlation is everywhere. Take two facts or convincing assertions and smoothly merge them into one conclusion that appears plausible because the two original statements can be presented as truthful. PRIVATE EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITY PLACES 7% of UK pupils are privately...

The paradoxical results of education for the masses

The paradoxical results of education for the masses

2 Dec 2014

The Churchill wartime government was kicked out by the electorate less than three months after the German surrender in May 1945. Labour won a huge majority and set about a radical socialist programme of nationalisation of key industries and the creation of the NHS and the welfare state. That story is quite well known. What will surprise many people now is that Churchill’s government managed to pass one dramatically progressive piece of parliamentary law in 1944: Rab Butler’s Education Act. There would be free education for all with selection at the age of 11. Children who passed the 11 Plus were eligible for places in grammar schools – it was intended that the top 25% should reach that standard. Places for the other children were to be offered at either secondary modern schools or technical schools which specialised in scientific and mechanical skills. Sadly technical schools were expensive and hard to staff and there were few set up. This gradually created the impression that the majority of children “failed” at the age of 11 and were sent to schools for underachievers. The 1944 act also allowed for the creation of comprehensive schools that could incorporate all standards. Perhaps grammar schools were burdened with having been promoted by a Conservative politician, but socialist politicians grew to dislike their perceived elitism and the Wilson governments of the 60s and 70s embarked on a determined programme of abolition. This culminated in an education act in 1976 which stated that state education “is to be provided only in schools where the arrangements for the admission of pupils are not based (wholly or partly) on selection by reference to ability or aptitude.” The class warrior secretary of state for education leading this was Shirley Williams (St Paul’s School for girls and Somerville College, Oxford). It is a matter of wonder that the most privileged members of the establishment tend to be dismissive of grammar schools and the upwards social mobility that they seem to offer. Our Old Etonian Prime Minister called arguments about grammar schools “splashing around in the shallow end of the educational debate” and “clinging on to outdated mantras that bear no relation to the reality of...