Bit late for that now Mr Obama. You have extended the Bush tax cuts for the richest 1%, and now with a year out you predend to be a Democrat again.

Your only hope is the batshit insane opposition that you will be up against.

That speech was total baws – behind the populist noises Obama continues to uphold the interests of the 1% and avoid reform. Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary?

Good speech – only problem is that both the speech and substance behind it were needed three years ago.

If trickle down economics doesn’t work, how come Britain became the relatively affluent country it was by mid 19th century as the result of a pioneering industrial revolution?

@4 Depends on how you define “doesn’t work”.

@ 4 Bob B

“If trickle down economics doesn’t work, how come Britain became the relatively affluent country it was by mid 19th century as the result of a pioneering industrial revolution?”

If it does work, how come conditions among the poor were so incredibly abject throughout that period?

Basically, wot Cylux says. “Not fit for purpose” would probably be more accurate. Even better: “The country won’t fall to bits but loads of people will suffer for no good reason”.

4
The 19th century allowed the UK to industrialize with no competition from other foreign producers or labour. No exploiting cheap 3rd world labour like Dyson.
But, ‘affluent’ and ‘better off’ are not the same;- the average life expectency of the labour, who did see a rise in affluence, eg. miners, paid for it through a decreased life-expectency.

@6 – Except this country probably IS going to fall to bits. The SNP couldn’t hope for better than the ammunition Cameron is providing them.

@ Chaise: “If it does work, how come conditions among the poor were so incredibly abject throughout that period?”

By mid 19th century, real wages in Britain were better than in other European countries but there were intense pressures on housing from population growth and large scale internal migrations. Overall, Britain’s population tripled between the censuses of 1801 and 1901 from about 10 ½ to 31 millions. By 1851, half the population was urban. As I recall, the population of Manchester about doubled between 1801 and 1851. For comparison, France’s population went from about 20 million in 1800 to about 30 million by the end of the 19th century – the slow population growth in France became a matter of political concern there.

Average life expectancy at birth in 1801 was about 40 years. By 1901, that had increased to 50 years so there was an improvement but there was little new in medicine – vaccination against smallpox (from 1795), antiseptics, anaesthetics, and aspirin towards the end of the century – so the improvement was mostly due to better living standards, better diet, less alcohol and better hygiene – and some holidays by the sea as the result of the railways. The permanent misery hypothesis isn’t credible.

This is the most comprehensive data set for average earnings in Britain that I can find:
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~alan/family/N-Money.html

As best I can tell, by mid 19th century, average real earnings in Britain were better than those elsewhere in western Europe because of Britain’s pioneering industrialisation but after c. 1870 other west European countries were catching up or doing better.

I really ought to charge for doing these tutorials. (-;

9
You seem to have moved the goalpost, you originally mentioned mid 19th century whereby I pointed out decreased life-expectency, now you are quoting 1901.
But to expand on the debate, I don’t need to point-out to you that different things work differently in different environments. Keynesian economics worked well in the immediate post WW2 era but less so from the 70s onwards.
The 19th century wasn’t very good to agricultural workers or women, the various Factories and Mines Act reduced family incomes considerably as women and children were pushed into service. Most statistics only show wages, not the wages lost by women in particularly.
Henry Mayhew’s ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ outlines the lives of the working poor in the capital. Friedrich Engels ‘The Conditions of the Working Class in England’ is a graphic account of the (mainly) observations of the working-class in Manchester.
.

Stevb: “But to expand on the debate, I don’t need to point-out to you that different things work differently in different environments. ”

That’s absolutely valid – there is no inherent reason in market economies why trickle down processes should work as effectively in a different environment or at another time.

The issues have been made clear about soaring executive pay compared with the stagnating median incomes in recent decades. The top 1 pc have been doing very well. That is what we need to focus on, not just by dismissing “trickle down” transmissions of affluence regardless.

High inflation and meagre wage rises will leave many Britons without any increase in living standards for more than a decade, a leading thinktank has said.

Presenting its analysis of Tuesday’s autumn statement, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) predicted real median household incomes would be no higher in 2015-16 than they were in 2002-3. In other words, more than a decade will have passed without any increase in living standards for those on average incomes.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/nov/30/living-standards-institute-fiscal-studies?newsfeed=true

I feel really bad for Obama. Throughout his speeches and written works, he’s shown that he really knows what he’s talking about. He’s taken a load of crap from the right-wingers because he is black and openly left-wing. That’s to be expected. What is really pathetic is the amount of flak he’s taken from the left-wing.

Anybody who understands anything about politics understands that this recesssion will last as long as it lasts and there is very little that anyone can do about it, regardless of what action they take. The problem is that free-market thinking rules the world, and it isn’t enough for just one or two or even ten world leaders to go against that. Similarly, the president of the United States does not get to decide everything that happens in the United States. He has to play ball with the Senate and Congress, whether he likes it or not.

In a country that is vastly right-wing, a left-wing president can’t change anything on his own. That doesn’t mean he isn’t the best president of our lifetimes, because unless you were alive in the 60s, he definitely is. To expect Obama to single-handedly change the world is to show a complete lack of understanding of how politics works. The man deserves our support. We’d be bloody lucky to have someone like that in charge of Britain.

@11 – Their figures are too optimistic already. 2018-2019 thanks to the new Government austerity measures.

4 What that mid 19th century free market, no regulation, no welfare system that created socialism?

Perhaps the president should listen to himself and actually implement policies that reflect his views.

@ 9 Bob B

None of that’s the point, Bob. The point is that living conditions were still dreadful, far worse than they had any need to be given the technology and resources available.

The reason was laissez-faire politics. The Victorians and their predecessors could have provided a decent education for all, a reliable safety net for people who fell on poor times (not workhouses that were borderline slavery), employment law to prevent mass exploitation. They didn’t, thanks to class attitudes, a “God helps those who help themselves” philosophy, and an eye firmly fixed on the bottom line.

We’re talking about an era of huge economic explosion, and SOME of that wealth trickled down, but people on the bottom largely remained as screwed as they’d ever been. Middle-class people could afford servants, buying their nearly every waking hour; being such a servant was seen as pretty good job for those born into a certain class; and most saw nothing WRONG with this. People lived in manors while children literally starved to death.

This isn’t a society we want to emulate.

If we fill up the masters table, more scraps will fall to the floor for the dogs to eat!

@16 – With the housing changes, frankly, the rich are going to start to need have live-in servants again to get their help.

@16: “None of that’s the point, Bob. The point is that living conditions were still dreadful, far worse than they had any need to be given the technology and resources available.”

That’s rubbish. On the evidence, living standards gradually improved through the 19th century from about the 1830s until the last quarter of the 19th century when what was then dubbed the “Great Depression” set in. Of course, living standards were nowhere near those of today and there were acute pressures on urban housing with migration into towns and cities while the national population trebled over the course of a century. By half way though the century, half the population were urban dwellers.

Government policy was NOT monolithically laissez-faire. There were a succession of factory acts through the century intended to curb the exploitation of women and children as Parliament increasingly regarded the outcomes of the free market as unacceptable.

In 1870, the Liberal government passed an Education Act to provide for universal primary education through to 12 as it came to be realised that by relying on charities and the churches for schooling education standards were falling behind those in other west European countries. County councils were created in 1888. Municipalities in the second half of the century were creating social infrastructure for water supply and sewers.

Mortality rates fell.

16. Chaise Guevara

None of that’s the point, Bob. The point is that living conditions were still dreadful, far worse than they had any need to be given the technology and resources available.

But they were also an improvement on what had gone on before. Even Marx had to fudge his figures to try to show the condition of the British working class was decline, but they were in fact getting richer.

The reason was laissez-faire politics. The Victorians and their predecessors could have provided a decent education for all, a reliable safety net for people who fell on poor times (not workhouses that were borderline slavery), employment law to prevent mass exploitation. They didn’t, thanks to class attitudes, a “God helps those who help themselves” philosophy, and an eye firmly fixed on the bottom line.

Sorry but no they could not have. Economic growth in the Victorian period was not that high. About one percent in real terms if I remember correctly. If they had introduced more taxes and regulation then that economic growth would have declined to nothing and while we might have inherited a wonderful set of regulations, we would still be sharing a small bowl of gruel.

And they did provide a decent education for all.

We’re talking about an era of huge economic explosion, and SOME of that wealth trickled down, but people on the bottom largely remained as screwed as they’d ever been. Middle-class people could afford servants, buying their nearly every waking hour; being such a servant was seen as pretty good job for those born into a certain class; and most saw nothing WRONG with this. People lived in manors while children literally starved to death.

No we are not. It looks wonderful in retrospect because pre-Industrial Britain was so poor and compared to the rest of the world Britain was so developed. But even high estimates for Britain’s economic growth don’t go above 2.5% per year. Much of which was eaten up by population growth. Some of the wealth trickled down. Quite a lot of it in fact. Living standards improved. But slowly as the economy grew. The industrial revolution was incredibly fragile and it only survived because of those Classical Liberal views you seem to hate.

What is so wrong with servants? You also miss the point – in all societies and at all times people starve to death. Malthus got that much right. What changed in the Victorian period is that such deaths became rare and then non-existent, first in Britain, then in Ireland and ultimately massive efforts were made in places like India. Famine was, for the first time in human history, not an ever-present threat.

This isn’t a society we want to emulate.

I fail to see why not. We spend vastly more on welfare and yet the great social institutions in Britain are Victorian or post-Victorian. The dole leaves us with nothing but high crime – but the Victorians built schools that worked and libraries that had books which hugely improved life for the working class. They built institutions right across Britain – many of which continue to help people. We built the Dome. The Nimrod. The CAP.

@26 – Let’s start with the average lifespan of 40 years.

“Decent” education? The basics, for younger children. Teenagers worked.

And no, while some wealth dribbled down, the labour shortages after the World Wars allowed the working class to demand and get better working conditions. Revisionism, as usual.

And hey, what’s wrong with paying people a pittance to wait on you hand and foot, right. It’s not like they’re Human too.

And right, the pitiful dole we have causes “crime”, better people die or get locked away in a workhouse, out of your sight. Out of sight, out of mind, after all, and it’s not like they’re Human, they’re poor.

Books for the poor? Now you’re just being silly.

Bob B’s main fallacy with his proof that Trickle Down works, is that he’s using a period of history where 1 specific nation enjoyed a rather large advantage over the rest of the world. As I said @17, fill up the master’s table enough and some will drop to the floor – that’s how trickle down works, in both theory and practice. In this respect, Trickle Down is in fact working right now in China as the workforce there is seeing gains in its wages, though I doubt Bob B would be in a rush to move there. However the argument for Trickle Down in the states is layered with the idea that it’ll be Average Joe & Jane that’ll benefit from the consequences, who clearly won’t.

SMFS <3 The Victorians?!?!?

who'da thunk it?…he always seemed so left wing to me!

Actually though I could imagine him covering up table legs to stop impure thoughts, maybe take a switch to his children if they dare talk when they shouldn’t have, get a prince albert and maybe murder a prostitute in Whitechapel….well maybe not the last one, but still,well you know, he might.

20
I would generally agree with the essence of your post, the ‘trickle-down’ was more accurately ‘rrickle-across’ as the economic development of the urban areas took over from the countryside., Those in service increased but it became the upstairs/downstairs division of the middle-class rather than the communal ethos of the countryside.
But women (and children) were taken out of the labour market through a series of reforms that we may call ‘progressive’ but were life threatening to many whose real family income decreased considerably although the main bread-winning male’s wage can be seen to rise.
Certainly the culture of the countryside was obliterated in the industrial revolution and little replaced it for years, Matthew Arnolds’s ‘Culture and Anarchy;’ attempted to give a framework for a new culture for a new society. Even commentators of the time were concerned about the impact upon the general psyche of society rather than the economic conditions.
Measuring economic gain doesn’t give an accurate picture of the mental health and general well-being of society. although there was no ‘golden age’ of the countryside and work and living conditions weren’t ideal, I would guess that mental wellbeing was better than in the 19th century.

“how come Britain became the relatively affluent country it was by mid 19th century as the result of a pioneering industrial revolution?”

Because the wealth stayed firmly in the hands of the 1%. Why do you think children were being sent up chimneys? For the sheer fun of it?

22. Cylux

Bob B’s main fallacy with his proof that Trickle Down works, is that he’s using a period of history where 1 specific nation enjoyed a rather large advantage over the rest of the world.

What advantages were these? What is more, what is the relevance? That may explain why Britain industrialised without protection, more or less, but how does it explain how Britain got richer?

As I said @17, fill up the master’s table enough and some will drop to the floor – that’s how trickle down works, in both theory and practice.

Indeed. It is hard to do otherwise – although some Third World kleptocracies show it is possible.

In this respect, Trickle Down is in fact working right now in China as the workforce there is seeing gains in its wages, though I doubt Bob B would be in a rush to move there.

Yet. China has seen one of the greatest increases in wages in human history. They do it with very little protection as well. If trickle down does not work, how do we explain this and Hong Kong and other similar cases?

23. carlos barlos

Actually though I could imagine him covering up table legs to stop impure thoughts, maybe take a switch to his children if they dare talk when they shouldn’t have, get a prince albert and maybe murder a prostitute in Whitechapel….well maybe not the last one, but still,well you know, he might.

Absolutely. I would do all of those except the prince albert. Don’t want to take the risk. You simply don’t mess with perfection.

@22 – And that’s why I call it dribble-down, after the master’s stuffed his mouth, there’s some overflow.

Except even that’s been choked off, corporations scientifically measure the size of their bites now.

Your the dogs and you will eat the crumbs we drop of the table ,thats trickle down theory .