Split (1)

train · 33.2M rows

text stringlengths 1 100k
The NHS and universal school education are the defining examples of universalism. The alternative - selectivity - instead emphasises that there are things that it is probably important that people have access to but that our collective responsibility is limited only to those in dire need who can't get access to those things by other means.
The prime example of a selectivity approach is the kind of benefit eligibility tests run by the likes of Atos. These are not variations of each other - these are fundamentally different political philosophies.
The case for universalism is rock solid and is supported by almost any detailed look at the data. You can look across many countries at many times over many policy areas and you will find the same thing.
When you provide a service that includes everyone, that service becomes a good service, is widely supported and becomes relied on by everyone. But because everyone starts from a different position, the impact of universal services is different for different people with the positive impact on the poor being particularly high.
So for example, if you make childcare free for all, yes this may partially subsidise the childcare needs of the affluent middle classes, but the impact on them (a bit more disposable income) is limited.
Universalism means that you decide that something should exist, that it is a core part of your society and that you should therefore ensure it is provided to all.
The same policy applied to a family with only one adult working in a low income job may well be to allow the second adult to take a job, which could conceivably double the household income.
The positive impact on the poorer household of exactly the same policy is massively bigger. That's how universalism created the era of greatest economic equality Britain has ever seen and why rolling it back has reversed those gains.
But why not just target the funding to those on whom the impact is biggest (the selectivity argument)? So only give the childcare support to the poor. The problem with this is measurable - it just doesn't work properly in practice. There are a number of reasons for this (I was one of four authors of a report which has the links to all the data to explain this) .
Here I'll just raise three. First, it's incredibly inefficient because immediately a chunk of the money that would be spent on the service is instead spent on assessment and other bureaucracy.
Second, because these services then become services only for the poor (who have a low propensity to vote), politicians have little incentive to support them properly, particularly when budgets are being cut (you only need to look at the assault on social services taking place in England just now to see this).
And third, because these are then seen as 'emergency' services, we are as a society much less invested in whether they are actually any good or not - the middle classes whom politicians shape policy to woo not longer have any vested interest and so bare-bones services are what result.
Academic study after academic study demonstrate that when you increase universalism social equality increases and when you increase selectivity, social equality decreases.
Academic study after academic study demonstrate that when you increase universalism social equality increases and when you increase selectivity, social equality decreases.
Imagine the impact on society if most of us were in a private healthcare insurance scheme but a proportion of the poorest in our society were relegated to a 'safety net-only' healthcare system for the poor. What do you think would be the result? Better lives for the poorest?
But selectivity keeps coming back into our political debate because it is inextricably linked to another political philosophy, one which is currently known as 'austerity'.
In this world view, governments have a fixed budget and must then 'spend wisely' by targeting their spending at those in 'most need'. But in fact what this political philosophy is really saying is 'we can't mess with the interests of the wealthy through tax so the rest of society will just have to put up with what little we can afford'. Selectivity is a smokescreen for a political philosophy of inequality and low tax.
There is a beautifully simple alternative philosophy, one which has underpinned my entire political world view - 'from the cradle to the grave, from each according to ability to pay to each according to need'.
It is a politics which places security for all in society ahead of the pursuit of extraordinary wealth for the few. And it works - it works incredibly well. If in doubt all you need to do is compare anywhere with a universal healthcare system to anywhere without one.
Where selectivity believes that 'fairness' comes from how you spend, universalism believes that effectiveness comes from how you spend - fairness comes from how you raise the money you spend. Spending via universalism is measurably more effective in almost every way, so that's how we should spend.
It is so incredibly important that we stand our ground and fight the fight for universalism. As soon as we start to give in to the 'something for nothing' arguments, the 'logic' starts to effect everything.
To make it fair we have to pay for it through properly progressive taxation. It is an incredibly simply formula which, in the decades after the Second World War, resulted in a more rapid improvement of the lives of the poor than almost anything else achieved in our history.
This is why it is so incredibly important that we stand our ground and fight the fight for universalism. As soon as we start to give in to the 'something for nothing' arguments, the 'logic' starts to effect everything.
Why should someone on minimum wage subsidise a winter heating payment for a millionaire? Well why should someone on minimum wage pay for the healthcare of a millionaire? Why should middle class children get a free university education when they can afford to pay? Well why should they get fifth and sixth year at high school for free either when lots of poorer children have left school? And so on.
This is why it is so dispiriting that this debate has been opened up by comments by the Scottish Government's new 'poverty tsar' Naomi Eisenstadt. This article began by arguing that this is one of the defining differences between Scottish politics and the politics of England and Wales.
In Scotland there is a strong consensus in favour of universalism in the 'mainstream' (including government and its institutions and academis). In London there is a strong consensus in favour of selectivity, a consequence of Blair making it a core part of New Labour philosophy.
From what I can tell, Naomi Eisenstadt is a well-intentioned, intelligent and thoughtful person. But she seems to come from a different political culture, one where euphemisms like 'failing schools' and 'living within our means' are the norm (although I'm sure she'd never use them). These concepts are not the norm in Scotland and we should fight to make sure that they do not become the norm.
This does not mean there are no difficult questions. I have said many times that when we produced the Book of Ideas we tried to find ways to fund a replacement of the benefits being cut by Osborne in a universalist way and concluded that with the limited resources Scotland can raise and the lack of policy control, it is virtually impossible.
From the cradle to the grave, from each according to ability to pay to each according to need. Let us keep that most enlightened of social philosophies front and centre in Scottish politics.
There are always 'tough choices'. But in making those choices we should never talk down or attack the fundamental philosophies on which progressive Scottish politics are based - the most recent person to attempt this was Johann Lamont and it went very badly for her indeed.
I'm not an insular person when it comes to policy. For quite a few years now I've been involved with projects which look round the world to see where we can find best practice.
In saying that we should fight against the anti-universalist philosophies which dominate Westminster policy debate from taking root in Scotland, I say it not because they don't work and because when they get a toe-hold they change the very nature of your politics.
Rather, I would (as so often) point north to suggest that universalism is at the very heart of the success of the Nordic countries. So by all means let's go looking for the best learning we can find on how to deliver public services. But let's look towards those who do it better than us, not worse.
And, above all, let's not cede political philosophy in the face of the ideological attacks coming from George Osborne. Universalism works and works well. It is redistributive and has done more to help the poor and vulnerable than any other social policy in a hundred years.
From the cradle to the grave, from each according to ability to pay to each according to need. Let us keep that most enlightened of social philosophies front and centre in Scottish politics.
Our next step should not be to introduce fees for university students or means-tested charges for seeing your GP, it should be the creation of a genuinely brilliant universal childcare system to which every citizen of Scotland with children has an automatic right (with a modest tax rise to pay for it if need be).
When it works, when it turns out to be transformational, when it is shown to be wildly popular - that'll be one more nail in the coffin of a politics Scotland has resisted for decades.
Picture courtesy of YouTube
This week, like much of July, a heat wave is cooking America with extreme temperatures, affecting energy production as well as causing fires and water shortages, sucking electricity like crazy to power the cooling necessary to avoid discomfort and even death. According to the National Weather Service, 122 million Americans are under heat alerts.
Fortunately, nuclear power hasn’t minded, scoring record capacity factors of 96% and up with no increase in price. Other energy sources do not fare so well.
It’s all about diversity. Whether in biology, in culture, in training, or in technology, when conditions change a system survives if there is sufficient diversity to adapt. Otherwise it dies. This is no less true for electricity production. Having a diverse group of energy systems is key to a society surviving changes in demographics and changes in government, geological processes and natural disasters, disruption in supplies from war, or extreme weather changes.
This concept is in full display this month as this heat wave continues to sweep across America. Just like during the polar vortex, when nuclear stepped up to relieve natural gas and coal when they failed to deliver on the demand, nuclear also performs wonderfully during extreme weather at the other end of the thermometer.
This kind of constant baseload power during the hottest part of the day is essential to keep our air conditioning going and for stabilizing the grid against blackouts. Nuclear plants are the backbone of the electricity grid, operating all the time even under the most extreme weather conditions.
Unfortunately, much of the electricity needed to combat this heat wave is concentrated during peak hours of the afternoon when wind turbines are not turning (see figure 2). Instead, peaker plants have to come online. Peaker plants operate only to make up the difference between base load and peak load (see figure 3). Our current energy grid makes these plants necessary, but they come at a steep price. Peaker plants are usually natural gas, but can also use coal, jet fuel, oil and diesel. In Washington State, hydropower serves as the peaker in a different way.
Peakers usually run for short periods of time and so are less efficient and dirtier than conventional base load fossil fuel plants. Though natural gas is certainly cleaner than coal, natural gas does have some environmental issues from fracking, to pipelines, to fugitive emissions of methane. And lots of CO2 emissions, if you care about that.
In unregulated markets like the Northeast and California, these peakers can gouge the buyer, tripling and quadrupling the price of electricity, especially during a heat wave when gas supplies are stretched thin.
Not nuclear. These plants just churn out power at the same low price, whatever the conditions.
But gas has come to be the essential fuel in America, forced to back up renewables, replacing coal and load-following the rest of the grid. However, electric utilities are struggling to meet peak demand in hot summer weather because of limits on their natural gas supply, especially in southern California, where it has been forced to replace so much nuclear power lost from the premature closing of the San Onofre nuclear power plant. The situation will get worse if the Diablo Canyon nuclear plants close prematurely as planned.
At the beginning of July, citing natural gas capacity problems, the California Independent System Operator (ISO) issued the first Flex Alert in two years as western America baked under triple-digit heat. Up until this summer, California had avoided the gas availability and pipeline delivery problems that plague other power grids during extreme weather, particularly in New England and the Midwest.
But when temperatures rise above 90°F, it takes more MWs to serve the same number of buildings, leading to strain on generators. A combination of voluntary demand response programs and calls for voluntary public conservation kept demand below dangerous levels.
This time.
The California grid also faces limited hydropower imports from the Pacific Northwest because of extreme heat up here, reducing the state’s ability to handle this crisis.
“SoCalGas told us they had gas congestion and capacity issues,” said ISO spokesman Steven Greenlee, which led to a decision to issue the public call for conservation. Day-ahead wholesale power prices had risen 51% in northern California and 44% in southern California in response to the heat wave.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, utilities across the western United States withdrew 1 billion cubic feet of gas from storage to satisfy power demand during this heat wave, during a period when they typically inject 11 billion cubic feet into storage.
During peak-hours in California, gas supplied over 60% of California's electric load while solar and wind supplied less than 15%. The largest solar plant in the United States, California’s Ivanpah, recovering from a solar fire in May and struggling with bad performance overall, isn’t helping much in this heat. After receiving $1.6 billion in loan guarantees from the Department of Energy and $535 million from the U.S. Treasury, Ivanpah is still unable to meet its promised 940,000 MWhs per year and is failing to even meet it's power purchase agreement.
“We got lucky in that there was some monsoon cloud cover from the desert southwest that came into California and kept temperatures lower, but it also added to the variability of solar resources that we had to contend with," said Greenlee.
Luck and more gas pipelines…if we close anymore nuclear plants, that’s what we’ll be depending on in the future.
Is Vincent Gray going to run for D.C. mayor? Should he run? If he does, can he win?
As to the first question, only Gray knows. Early signs suggest he would like to make a bid for the job he lost April 1, 2014, when now-Mayor Muriel E. Bowser defeated him in the Democratic primary.
This much is known: Gray has been taking soundings around town, testing the mood of the city, gauging voter interest. Gray, who represents Ward 7 on the D.C. Council, reportedly has already assembled a skeletal crew that is poised to blossom into full election- campaign mode if he gives a green light. It's a tossup at this point. Look for a decision at the beginning of the year, six months before the June 19 primary election.
"Should he run?" calls for an entirely different assessment.
Gray, 75, is still smarting from the voters' rejection of his reelection bid. He lays his loss at the feet of Bowser and then-U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr., who, with much fanfare, launched a corruption probe into Gray's 2010 mayoral election campaign.
Two years before the April 2014 election, then-Ward 4 council member Bowser was one of three lawmakers to call for Gray to resign because of Machen's probe.
The investigation dragged on for three years. The political roof fell in on Gray when D.C. businessman Jeffrey E. Thompson entered federal court on March 10, 2014, and pleaded guilty to illegally giving more than $2 million to Gray's 2010 campaign. Thompson said Gray knew about that "shadow campaign."
The media took it from there.
A March 10 Post headline screamed: "Gray knew of 'shadow campaign,' Thompson prosecutors say; mayor says it's all a lie." Other news organizations followed suit with headlines and extended coverage of their own.
That same month, Bowser said at a debate, "I found out that [Gray] didn't actually win the Democratic primary [in 2010 against Mayor Adrian M. Fenty] fair and square, so . . . I could not support somebody who would be almost indicted."
There stood Gray, three weeks before the April 1 primary: uncharged, but publicly accused of involvement in unlawful behavior, with no opportunity to confront his accusers or review the evidence against him in a court of law. Instead, he found himself in the court of public opinion.
It was no contest on primary Election Day 2014.
A year later, another decision was reached: The U.S. Attorney's Office, under the new management of Channing D. Phillips, concluded its investigation into the 2010 campaign with no charges filed against Gray, citing likely insufficient evidence.
"Justice delayed is justice denied," Gray said following Phillips's announcement. But it was Machen, not Bowser, who torpedoed Gray. Besides, revenge is a poor reason to seek office.
So should he run?
Having a passion to get the old job back is not enough. Gray would have to make the case that Bowser needs to be replaced and that he's the one to do it. That's a tall order, according to a Post poll in June, which showed that 67 percent of D.C. residents approve of the mayor's job performance, although there's some softness in that number.
Only 20 percent strongly approved of the job she was doing while 48 percent gave her negative marks on curbing the influence of big-money donors in the John A. Wilson Building.
And, happiness isn't spread across the city.
Management of the city's only public hospital, United Medical Center, is disgraceful. Allegations of high school students barely able to read and write being allowed to graduate are, if true, alarming. City-provided paths from dependency to self-sufficiency, under Bowser's Health and Human Services Department, are as steep and clumsy as ever.
And her three-year-old administration has hardly been scandal-free: high-ranking Bowser officials getting preferential treatment in the school lottery; a cabinet member misusing staff for personal business; lingering pay-for-play suspicions.
None of that translates into support for Gray, who, despite his denials, must still dispel lingering suspicions about his role in the illegal 2010 shadow campaign.
The burden is on Gray not only to make the case for denying Bowser another term in office; he also needs to convince voters that he alone can make the city a better place for all residents.
So, can Gray win if he jumps into the race?
Dislodging an incumbent is an uphill battle, especially against such a well-financed, politically astute leader as Bowser. The task is even more formidable when voters overall seem generally satisfied with the city's direction.
A seasoned strategist, who requested anonymity unless and until Gray declares, sees it this way: In an off-year election, about 100,000 ballots will get cast. Gray wins handily in Wards 7 and 8 and carries Ward 5. He gets votes in Wards 1, 2, 3 and 6 but not enough to win. He and Bowser fight to the finish in battleground Ward 4, where she resides. If, with a volunteer, grass-roots campaign, Gray scores more than 50,000 votes, he squeaks out a win.
A tall order, indeed.
Read more from Colbert King's archive.
Socialism: Whether it was an accident or sabotage, the deadly explosion at Mexico's state-owned oil firm wasn't an unusual event. The one thing Thursday's incident at the Pemex tower should be is a spur to privatize.
Despite a much-publicized war against cartels, the real Mexico story is one of moderately good economic growth with zero net illegal emigration and a public sector financed by a budget showing a $1 billion annual surplus.
But then there's Pemex, the supposed symbol of national sovereignty, which in reality is nothing but a millstone around Mexico's neck holding the country back from far greater gains.
Pemex's many costs and debts are among the reasons why that $1 billion annual surplus is not $6 billion. It's also a big reason Mexico has $59 billion in debt. Its unionized 150,000-strong workforce is one of the least efficient, yielding an average of $506,000 of revenue per employee per year, far below the $2.865 million each employee at the top five international oil companies brings in, according to a Baker Institute study.
Less revenue, less investment, less safety. Oilmen will tell you every incident is different, and some accidents do occur at private firms of course. But the overall Pemex record speaks volumes, with comparable events at its installations in 2012, 2010, 2007, 1993 and 1984.
Even as Pemex costs the government, the government costs Pemex. Its earnings are effectively taxed at 60% to finance about a third of the government, leaving it miserably under-invested in its own production. Not surprisingly, Mexican oil production fell from 3.4 billion barrels a day in 2004 to about 2.5 billion a day in 2012.
"The government vacuums the cash flow out of this company like an Electrolux because they need to support the government and social services. Is that how a private company behaves? Of course not," noted Garfield Miller, president of Aegis Energy Advisors, who explained to IBD that private and public oil companies have different goals.
"When you are a government institution, almost by definition an instrument of social policy, your mission becomes inescapably broader than simply maximizing value for a narrow set of constituents" — as occurs with private oil companies that answer to shareholders.
The situation is so bad in Mexico that it cannot take advantage of its vast new deepwater discoveries in the Gulf, just as the U.S.' highly efficient private companies expand production on the U.S. side of the Gulf and the shale revolution increases production, as well.
Things are so dire that already Mexico is importing gasoline from the U.S. and by 2019 is expected to be importing oil. That's ironic for a country which by national lore considers oil a symbol of independence and has indoctrinated its people into believing it is therefore impossible to privatize.
Yet the hard facts worldwide show that privatized companies outperform public ones — in technology, production, profitability and safety.
The Baker Institute's 2007 "Empirical Evidence of the Operational Efficiency Of National Oil Companies" study impartially demonstrated that private companies operate better than public enterprises.
The objectively calculated study of more than 80 companies concluded that relative to economically efficient producers, a national oil company is likely to under-invest, over-employ, sell oil products at subsidized prices, and shift extraction of resources from the future to the present.
"Technical inefficiencies," the paper concluded, "are largely the result of governments exercising control over the distribution of rents."
It ought to be a lesson for Mexico, and yet it's not taking hold. Mexico's new President Enrique Pena Nieto ran for office on a promise to introduce reforms at Pemex that could lead to privatization. But he has already begun backtracking.
The explosion at Pemex's 51-story headquarters on Mexico City's skyline should be his wake-up call.

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.